this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Who in history (either present or in the past) do you think has had the biggest positive impact on humanity? (self.asklemmy)
submitted 9 months ago by Aurelius to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Mathematicians, Physicists, Scientists, and Astronomers: Good effort everyone. The foundation of a rational world.

Very Notable Mentions:

  • Chemist: Fritz Haber. 1/3 of world food production today can be attributed to his discovery. Also an enormous negative impact, see German Chemical Warfare.

  • Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.

  • Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.

  • Philosopher: Socrates. Critical Thinking.

  • Computers: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. See empowerment of computation and relegating ridiculously complex math and data collection to machines.

  • Computer Networking: J. C. R. Licklider, DARPA, and Tim Berners-Lee. See Internet and I/O on a global scale. Both positive and negative.

  • Finally, the largest net positive of all: Artists. Yes, artists. Popularity as the prime determinant by nature of their work. For inspiration, desire, meaning, peace, community, and emotion. The language of all, an instinctive form of communication.

My visual pick is Leonardo da Vinci as both a practical and artistic contributor. As for classical, it's nearly impossible to pick, but I'd say Beethoven and then Bach.

[–] kromem 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Eh, kind of 'rediscovered' more.

Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.

Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair.

Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh.

For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be."

  • Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4.1217-1232 (50 BCE)

Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.

In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn't do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.

For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.

Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.

  • Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 5.837-859

Certainly the more modern versions of these ideas had the benefit of the scientific method to help flesh them out and gain traction as opposed to being rejected and forgotten by dogma.

But let's not be like the ancient Greeks in claiming Pythagoras invented ideas that we now know predated him by millennia. We owe a great deal to the giants on whose shoulders we stand on, but let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn't get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

It appreciate the knowledge and poetry. Thank you.

let us not forget the giants who tread the ground well before them and simply didn’t get taken up on the offer of their shoulders.

Rather, let us not forget the people whose ideas reflected reality. Data and science are not speculation, "must haves", or attributions of unknown mechanisms to the favor of deities.

Many people speculated on gravity, astronomy, and falling things long before someone put it into a mathematical formula. That is, quantitative and qualitative assertions outweigh ideological ones. I speculated with a sibling about black-holes being potential wormholes or portals several years before I read a news article saying Stephen Hawking speculated the same. Yet I provide no supporting evidence, written and dated or not, thus I am no giant.

[–] kromem 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yet I provide no supporting evidence, written and dated or not, thus I am no giant.

Much of Einstein's work we recognize as monumental were things that could not be proven in his time and were only validated decades later.

The Epicureans may not have had the scientific method available to them, but their focus on observation driven speculation was literally one of the factors that fed into its creation (see the Pulizer winning The Swerve).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Much of Einstein’s work [...] only validated decades later.

You mean Einstein's equations? The maths that were solid enough to develop advanced destructive mechanisms and form entirely new theories equations?

the Pulizer winning The Swerve

To be clear, the prize for... art, and not journalism.

I'm not arguing that philosophy had no role in shaping history positively. Shaped history, yes. Came up with bright ideas, yes. Proved the atoms were arrangements of the four elements, not so much. Hedonism being the point of life, also not so much. Gave evidence for their claims? Very little more than speculation.

They gave contributions, yes. My point is they are contributors, but not giants in science. Having not had the method available to join the scientific revolution is core to this assertion.

[–] kromem 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Proved the atoms were arrangements of the four elements, not so much.

Wasn't the Epicurean position. Lucretius only surmises that there were likely a few handfuls of base forms of indivisible parts and then a multitude of their combinations. In fact, he rejects the elemental view.

And given we jumped the gun on naming 'atoms' after the word for indivisible, the closer philosophical parallel to modern concepts is quanta. And in that context, you even have Lucretius claiming that the behaviors of said indivisible parts must have a degree of indeterminate outcomes beyond following static physical laws for there to be free will (long before Bell's work relating the behavior of quanta to superderminism). He also surmised that light was made up of indivisible parts that were extremely light and moving very, very fast around 2,000 years before Einstein proved the discrete nature of light.

They were right about everything from survival to the fittest, contribution of traits from each parent, the quantization of light, and the indeterminate behaviors of quanta literally thousands of years before these things are proven.

It wasn't mere happenstance that they ended up being the most correct about the physical world of all the schools of philosophy in antiquity. They had a concrete methodology behind their success, and frankly it's a methodology that modernity would do well to have learned more from.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Tim Berners-Lee is an excellent choice

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I dont think evolution should be considered just a theory now,, its basically proven.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Theory doesn't mean what people think it means.

Culturally, we misunderstand theory to be equivalent to "hypothesis," meaning "We have an idea, now we need to prove or disprove it."

But accurately, theory means "We have a framework of interrelated ideas that fit the observable evidence." In that sense, evolution is an EXTREMELY well supported theory.

Gravity is also a theory. So are general and special relativity. So is all of quantum physics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I see, thanks for the nice explanation

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

You are wonderful. Well put.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

In addition to what The Bard In Green said, while we know that evolution does happen, there is a lot of debate over what is its main driving force. Darwin argued that the main force was natural selection, and most biologists agree with him. But there are also other schools, such as Kimura's neutral theory (evolution is caused primarily by luck) and Margulis's symbiosis theory (evolution is caused primarily by mutualism).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Kinda settin the bar a little high here for Lemmy posts, ain'tcha?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

We're all here trying to make the place nicer. I think we're all contributing what we can to make the place what we want it to be.

For me, I want a psychologically safe place where I can have fun, share my ideas, and learn something new. Especially learning interesting tidbits that can lead me down a rabbit hole of knowledge. So that's what I'm doing. Here's hoping a snagged a few people off to wonderland.