Who was the Most Important Person in History?

Great Debates
101

But the original question wasn’t about the most original/revolutionary thinker in history, it was what person had the most influence/most important to the development of the modern world. And since we’re stuck with our history, it doesn’t answer the question to state that person B could’ve done the same thing that person A accomplished… because, in this history, person B didn’t do it and person A did.

As I mentioned, the question is backward looking from the perspective of today’s world, meaning that many of the answers given are only relevant because of the Western domination established after Gutenberg’s press. For example, Alexander the Great wouldn’t show up on this list had Chinese civilization come to rule the world in the manner that Western European civilization had: we’d be talking up Zheng He.

Here’s another way of looking at it - In 1400CE there were 7-8 differing civilizations in the world, each with their own worldview, traditions, ways of life:

  1. Islam
  2. China (Confucianism)
  3. Japan
  4. India
  5. W. Europe
  6. Aztecs
  7. Byzantium
  8. Mayans

Today, the list is dramatically shorter:

  1. W. Europe
  2. Islam

Byzantine, Azteckian (sp?), and Mayan civilizations no longer exist. China is no longer Confucian and it, along with India and Japan, have increasingly oriented their societies among “Western” lines (becoming capitalist* nation-states** is just two of the ways that they’ve done so), therefore diluting their own traditions of civilization, to the point where they are more seen now as “cultures” rather than separate, autonomous, distinct centers of civilization. Of all the civilizations existent in 1400, only Islam remains unique.

So, why? How? What happened in Europe after 1400 where it could explode from their backwater to essentially take over the globe in a way never before seen, and to recast it in its own image?

The answer lies in Europe’s advantages in communications, especially in the invention of the movable type press. The ability to store information and to copy it flawlessly, no matter how many copies are made, was completely new to human civilizations and it was this, in the hands of Europe, that made the world as it is today. Yes, Europe had “X” (be it science, or guns, or philosophy, or whatever), but more importantly, they had the ability and the means to inform tens of millions almost immediately about it, which is just as crucial as the thing itself.

And this ability was given to them by Gutenberg, which is why I’m arguing his case.

*A Western European idea
** Another Western European idea
(both of them developed, of course, after the invention of the printing press).

102

Well John T, that is AN idea. i don’t particularly agree with it though.

First off, your list of civilizations at 1400 is woefully inadequate. The Aztecs and the Mayans were in different time periods, as were the olmecs. The Incans in peru were also thriving, and you would be beheaded if you were to include protestant England with the Catholic continent. The 1400’s also saw the rise of Czars in Russia, and even Civ IV had the foresight to include the Mali empire.

More importantly, i disagree with your view of the world right now as Everybody vs the Middle East. That’s absurd. The east coast of the US is probably as culturally independent from the west coast as ancient china was from japan much less modern China and modern America.

If your’e not classifying “civilizations” as culturally distinct but more as autonomous regions of power, how is modern china any less of an individual civilization now than it was under dynastic rule? that it has a mcdonalds? Did that mean western european civilization was being corrupted by the east in their search for spices and silk in the middle ages? How are the Islamic states that much more different than the asian states, or the south american states, or african nations? how is the concept of charging highest price you can get away with for a good, and organizing into nations a western idea? was the rest of the world just giving away their goods and services for free while living in tribal squallor before westerners came gallovanting in with their books and told them to do otherwise?

perhaps most importantly, how did gutenberg revolutionize the world with his printing press? he would be impotent without existing copies of books to copy, whereas the writers would only be hindered but still have purpose with their contributions. Jesus founded christianity without the aid of a printing press. Gutenberg would have no bible to print without Jesus.

This is why religious figures have an edge on the rest of the populous in this argument. The religious figures stand alone in their efforts. Scientists piggyback off of other scientists’ work and their breakthroughs are almost always “right place right time” deals. Even newton acknowledges that he “stands on the shoulders of giants”. Engineers face a similar dilemma in that their inventions piggy back off of science done by others and you can’t have a car without an engine, an engine without combustion, etc. as the tech tree fractals its way throughout time. Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha founded their religions individually, and if there was help, they divert their contributions back to the top, magnifying their importance. Yes, all have legions of priests and monks adding value to their contribution, but they add to the impact of the contribution whereas Einstein adding onto Newton’s original kinematics equations considerations for near light speeds is its own contribution and takes away from Newton’s glory rather than amplifies it.

However, the problem i have with Jesus and Mohammed and Abraham, especially Jesus, is that their contributions are all based on the same god. And if we can deify Jesus, why not immortalize god as the most important person in history? Because he didn’t exist? But he exists! He exists as much as Jesus was the chosen one, and as much as Abraham was the chosen one, and Mohammed was … the chosen one. Because he wasn’t a man? Then is Jesus disqualified from the race for being divine? Are we now arguing what a MAN is? If Jesus is disqualified than shouldn’t abraham and mohammed be as well since they are on their own quite powerless except as a vessel with which god speaks - i.e. their contributions aren’t really their own contributions but merely a divine mouthpiece?

anyway, my vote for the single most influential person would be Jesus. He has overcome mortality to the point of deification. Believe in him or not, the impact he has on the world is undeniable.

however, i do claim that his impact is largely due to him entwining himself with God himself (to no fault of his own. this is mostly a church institution), making belief in him mandatory. For the most important person to create something on his own, I’d like to suggest Maxwell. Though he didn’t wrap his mind entirely around particle/wave duality, he did perfect EM wave motion which was the stem of so many different applications it’s almost innumerable. From Quantum Mechanics, to the radio, from every day tasks to monumental events like the moon landing would be impossible without exploiting EM waves. Maybe some would disagree, but i feel like he has more practical impact than some others previously mentioned… like Alexander the Great.

103

I think he did propose more than “don’t do that” but no matter. IMHO Jesus recognized the need for personal inner change to affect overall society. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” etc. He also recognized individual volition and knew many people wouldn’t grasp or care about his insight. He chose to do what he was able to do. Live according to the principles he taught, and find a few who were willing to listen and teach them so they in turn would teach others. It’s an innate principle of his teaching about changing the inner person that the individual has to want to make that change, and in Jesus’ teaching they must also see the connection between them and others. Loving thy neighbor doesn’t always yield positive results if your neighbor is an asshole. It takes commitment and faith in the principle to try and love those who don’t love you back. He also had the vision to see equality regardless of economics or position, in a society of class and privilege.

You’re complicating things unnecessarily. I didn’t nominate Jesus for the title the OP refers to. I simply commented on a post from another poster who also did not make any claims about Jesus per the OP.

I don’t think JC was the only teacher who had that kind of insight into humanity or taught it. I just happen to agree with what he taught. Assuming he was an actual historical person and our imperfect records of him are somewhat accurate. Even if they aren’t the principle remains intact.

104

Ah yes. I’ve seen your movies. Impressive. Just loose the cheesy wah wah guitar sountrack. :slight_smile:

you are kidding right?

105

Nothing has changed and probably nothing will change life more than the computer. It’s scary when you consider the computer age is really in its infancy.

I’ll go with Bill Gates, who started the whole bruhaha.

106

Ummm maybe someone else caught this & mentioned it later on… but didn’t COPERNICUS mention something about this like a hundred years before Galileo??

And as far as most important, I’d tend to agree with the person who said the most important person probably wasn’t even mentioned by name. After all, where would we be if no one had figured out that things move better when put on a round thing? Or if you hit 2 rocks together of a certain type, it makes sparks, which leads to fire? Or even when you make the sparks, you have to have small flammable materials to feed the fire? How about that food tastes better if you put certain plants in it? I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

107

Are you being intentionally coy? No matter. The thread has moved on.

108

Yeah… putting aside the fact that Bill Gates did not start the modern computer revolution, nor even the idea of everyone having a computer in their own home, none of what he did would be in any way possible without the invention of the integrated circuit, which led directly to the invention of the first digital computer.

Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby both independently invented it.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were the most important men in history, they were a hell of a lot more significant than Bill Gates, no matter how good he is at making money.

109

Putting together an easy-to-use interface is very important. What good is a car if you needed a pit crew every time you started it up? If people were forced to use dos, or even linux instead of a strictly GUI like Windows, you wouldn’t have nearly as many people on computers. Now this may bring up the old “well somebody else would’ve thought of it” debate, and the proverbial snake starts eating its own tail again.

110

Except that Gates didn’t think of it. Somebody else would’ve thought of it? Somebody else did think of it. That somebody was Xerox.

111

Agree w/ whoever said Thomas Edison upthread.

112

putting together a mouse isn’t the same thing as putting together an operating system. again, putting together a good operating system doesn’t mean it’ll catch on and make using a computer as easy as pointing and clicking. windows 95 made it so easy to use a computer, a toddler could negotiate it.

do you honestly believe that xerox had a bigger impact on people using a personal computer than microsoft did?

113

What makes you think Linux isn’t GUI-based? I almost never bother to have a terminal open, because I don’t need it. I can click on everything.

114

Jesus Christ is the factual answer though it’s too easy and people who won’t look at it honestly won’t want to believe it. It’s irrelevant whether or not he really existed.

Other ones I would choose would be:

Augustus Caesar
Plato

115

Actually I have read arguments about whether or not Mohammed actually existed. So it’s not unquestionable.

116

There has been a lot of good debate on this issue, but it’s clear: the most imporant person to have ever lived MUST be Cecil Adams.

I would have thought that was obvious.

117

Another name worthy of consideration is Themistocles, the Athenian general largely responsible for defeating Xerxes’s navy at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. His plan to lure the Persian navy into the Straits of Salamis negated the Persians’ superiority in numbers and allowed the smaller Greek fleet to score a decisive victory. Following the defeat, Xerxes took a substantial portion of his army and went home, leaving the Greek invasion in the hands of a subordinate who, leading a reduced army, was himself eventually defeated at the Battle of Plataea.

There’s a reasonable argument that Themistocles’ actions at Salamis saved Greece, thus preserving the roots of much of modern Western philosophy and science. We can argue about whether the end result is an overall benefit (certainly the Persians did much to advance civilization in their own right, and who’s to say that the Greeks wouldn’t have developed their ideas under Persian rule), but as history stands, Themistocles’ significance is hard to overstate.

118

Yes. The Xerox work inspired the people who designed the Windows (and Mac, etc.) UI. The Apple/Microsoft work was extension and refinement, certainly, but you shouldn’t discount the earlier work because it wasn’t as well known as what came later.

ETA: If you haven’t already seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos” (do a search for video). Englebart was the guy who invented the mouse, and his lab was the second node on INTERNET.

119

According to Pirates of the Silicon Valley , the movie about Jobs and Gates.
Gates had sold MS Dos to IBM but when Jobs got permission to use the GUI and the mouse from Xerox Gates realized a graphical interface could bury DOS. He tricked Jobs into giving him a version of the GUI to work on and Windows was born.

but it was a movie

120

Wow. Three pages and only one mention of Buddha, and that a throwaway in a late post plunking for Jesus. Maybe a little cultural bias? A litle?

As for the Gutenbergers, I’m sorry, but the press wasn’t why Europe conquered the world. It had to do with guns and gunpowder. If anyone gets the credit for that, it’s Jesus, cuz sectarian squabbles had a lot to do with why Europeans got so good at warfare. Of course, he (presumably) would have been tremendously dismayed at that, but that’s merely ironic.

As for the primitivists, I agree that’s probably the most credible line of inquiry. Albeit anonymous. Personally, I’d plunk for the discoverer of clothes over the discoverer of fire. Totally innovative (no other animal has 'em) and a heck of a lot more reliable and durable than fire.