Who is (or was) the Worlds Greatest Human?

[Sqube]

Jesus and Mohammed.

I know the OP said one person, but I’d be hard-pressed to find two people who had more of an influence on how people think, and how they justify their actions.

[psychonaut]

*Originally posted by John Mace *
2. Aristotle.

Ah yes, the great Aristotle, who claimed, without bothering to spend a few minutes checking a representative sample, that heavier objects fall faster than light objects, and that men have more teeth than women. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Philosophocles
Just for the sake of being the devil’s advocate–Leibniz also developed a system of calculus.

And it is his notation that pervades to the present day. Perhaps I’m just biased having been raised on the Leibnizian system, but I find Newton’s fluent/fluxion notation horribly convoluted.

Originally posted by Sqube
Jesus and Mohammed. I know the OP said one person, but I’d be hard-pressed to find two people who had more of an influence on how people think, and how they justify their actions.

They influenced society, yes, but did they truly benefit it, as the OP asks? This is certainly debatable.

And with all the talk of Gutenberg, let’s please remember that he didn’t invent the printing press; he simply introduced and popularized (in Europe) a better method of casting type and a better printing press. Many of his refinements to the printing process, including movable type, had already been in use by the Chinese for centuries.

[jovan]

Re: Guttenberg.

I know, it’s a nitpick, but it really annoys me; Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. He used a wine press for his purposes, and printing presses had been used in China, Korea and Japan for hundreds of years.

What Gutenberg did invent was moveable type, which sped up the printing process considerably.

It was a great invention with awesome consequences but, IMO, it was bound to happen, Gutenberg was just the man with the right knowledge and entrepreneurship to make it so.

I’m much more impressed by people who have changed the way we think about ourselves and the world. For that reason I will nominate:

Siddharta Gautama
Aristotle
Jesus/St-Paul

[Barks_dog_food]

Mikhail Gorbatchev

[Dreaming_of_Maria_Callas]

Well, if one is a Christian who places a lot of stock in the gospels and Jesus’ words therein, the greatest human (at least up to AD 30) would be John the Baptist.

UnuMondo

[RandySpears]

*Originally posted by Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor *
**Sir Winston Churchill. Hands down. **

CHURCHILL:
“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes”.

[Fox_in_the_Snow]

William Shakespeare.

[Estilicon]

I’d say Aristotle but his Scientific Method was flawed- hell many of his ideas were assumed true for 1500 years and are dead wrong. He had good intentions though.

Ah yes, the great Aristotle, who claimed, without bothering to spend a few minutes checking a representative sample, that heavier objects fall faster than light objects, and that men have more teeth than women.

You are unfair. Granted neither Aristotles nor his philosphy were perfect, who can cast the first stone?

You forget that he alone created a science, logic, that for more than two thousand years has remained almost as he created it.

It’s true the greeks weren’t that great with the inductive method it was a cultural problem, slaves made all the manial labors, great minds needed only their intellects to grasp the truth. If you want perfect science from a people that despised even the primitive methods they had 3000 thousands year ago, you’ll have a better chance reading the bible (this an exageration and a low punch at creationism).

Besides the greeks concentrated their spirits not in the natural world but in themselves, Will Durant, (anamerican author, read his book) said that there is rarely a question regarding conduct or spirit that the greeks didn’t discuss themselves.

And the culmination of the greek spirit was Aristotles, you can discuss his science but not his importance, every “thinker” from his days to our days has either argued for or againts this macedonian guy. For more than a thousand years, again I am quoting durant, his writings had the same infalibility of the Bible. Remember Galileo was brought to trial not because his discoveries contradicted the bible but because his findings were against the “old master” (we all know who is the new one).

[eburacum45]

I don’t disagree with any of the names put forward so far, but I think we should put in a mention for Alan Turing- one day we might all be universal computing machines ourselves, and his name will be near, or at, the top of the list.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

*Originally posted by RandySpears *
**CHURCHILL:
“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes”. **

cite?

[wonky]

Raoul Wallenberg.

Related question: Is the greatest human the one who attempted to counteract the greatest evil?

Julie

[RandySpears]

For example this document:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4511252,00.html

As Tony Blair and Bush trot the globe warning of the evils of chemical weapons, Churchill hardly stands out as a role model. As president of the air council in 1919, he wrote: “I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.” A few years later mustard gas was used against the Kurds. Nor did his distaste for the “uncivilised” stop there. He branded Gandhi “a half-naked fakir” who “ought to be laid, bound hand and foot, at the gates of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy seated on its back”.

For further discussion, search google for the full text of the quote…

[buddy129]

Britney Spears (especially mankind)

[Shaolinrabbit]

I get that Gutenberg didn’t specifically invent the printing press. Ghandi didn’t invent civil disobedience either, but he used it to what may be the greatest advantage.

The earliest dated printed book known is the “Diamond Sutra”, printed in China in 868 CE. However, it is suspected that book printing may have occurred long before this date. In 1041, movable clay type was first invented in China. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable wooden or metal letters in 1436 (completed by 1440).

The Gutenberg press with its wooden and later metal movable type printing brought down the price of printed materials and made such materials available for the masses. It remained the standard until the 20th century. During the centuries, many newer printing technologies were developed based on Gutenberg’s printing machine e.g. offset printing.

Gutenberg’s wooden and metal moveable type made it possible to print books in volume for the first time, the Gutenberg press’ predecessors used moveable clay type which was prone to breaking down with repeated printings.

My vote still goes to Gutenberg for wise choice of materials and ‘selling’ the idea of printing across Europe. He may have simply been the right man in the right place at the right time to make it happen, but he did make it happen.

[Spiritus_Mundi]

Thales of Miletus.

Without him, perhaps no Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus, Democritus.
No flowering of philosophy, mathematics, logic, democracy.
No classical Greece, no Roman revival, no Rennaissance, no modern democratic repulics.

Or maybe all of those things would have happened anyway. I still say Thales rocked hard.

Oh, and Leibniz did calculus better than Newton. British mathematics was retarded for decades because they would not abandon Newtons methof of fluctions.

[Purplefloyd]

Nobody mentioned Albert Einstein? hes got my vote.

[psychonaut]

Do I detect an echo in here?

[5_time_champ]

Thanks for the further info Copa. I should know better than to just say “Gutenberg’s printing press.” One has to include the use of standardized, interchangable , and indiviual letter typefaces.

As far as ‘right man at the right time’ goes, there is the theory that the Black Death in the previous century had made paper more available. The best printing in the world is pretty well useless without a relatively cheap source of print media. Papermaking had increased in the 14th century, in part, because the clothes of the dead were used to make linen paper.

[McDuff]

There was once a little girl whose parents had died. She lived on the streets, looking after her younger brother. She became a prostitute, and gave birth at the age of fourteen. She died when she was sixteen. I do not know her name.

She’s as good a candidate as any.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

Re: Churchill:

I remember just before the millenium, columnist Charles Krauthammer (who I rarely agree with) said something very cogent in nominating Churchill as Person of the Millenium.

(I do science for a living, and music as a serious hobby, so my nominees were more along the lines of Einstein, Bach, Isaac Newton and Louis Armstrong).

But Krauthammer argued that absent what Churchill did, Hitler would have ruled the world.

And even I have to admit that an entire world in 3rd-world conditions (with monstrous atrocities ‘just part of life’) would have dwarfed just about any good one person could do.