Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Person of the Millenium: Explorers, Scientists?

Author:Ian Beatty
Posted:12/4/1998; 8:48:24 AM
Topic:Person of the Millenium?
Msg #:779 (In response to 634)
Prev/Next:778 / 780

Jefferson's name might not be recognized around the world, but the "democracy" movement which he helped to start has been felt, and continues to be felt, around the world. In a similar way, Karl Marx affects rural uneducated peasants in backcountry China even though they may never have heard of him.

The problem I have with giving the award to a discoverer like Marco Polo is that someone else would have "discovered" those lands eventually. They may have changed the timing of the events, but it's not clear how much they changed the ultimate outcome.

For most scientists, the problem is the same: if scientist X didn't discover what he did, another would have eventually, at least in our current "human wave" approach to science.

That, however, may not be true for the really original scientific thinkers like Newton and Einstein. Newton seems to have single-handledly sparked the scientific revolution and allowed us to think about the universe mathematically and mechanistically (following up on Kepler et al.), so he sounds like a good candidate

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