Greatest Thinker, in Your Opinion

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Redoubtable, Jun 28, 2003.

  1. Which famed or not-so-famed cogitator, of all the memorable luminaries of human history, would the reader deem as most worthy of praise?
    Please give adequate justification and explantion. Maybe I can learn something new and endearing.

    I'm feeling ambivalent at the moment and will reply to my own question in due time.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 29, 2003
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  3. twobob Registered Senior Member

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    Eienstien.. not for E=MC2 , but for the fact he was a lot of fun.
    And mainly for the line -
    "My religion is my fascination of the universe"

    (sorry its not elaborate but its that simple for me )
     
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  5. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    I'd say Newton for his thoughts on gravity. To actually see what was on his mind would be so good!!!

    Even now, to actually see what gravity is, is quite hard to envisage, for example; In a 1 dimensional environment then gravity would just be pure weight, i.e. it is heavy and pulls downards, whereas in our universe gravity must be a force that turns in on itself!!

    Explaining what I am trying to express is not easy to do in words, so I will use some diagrams. If anyone can explain how gravity actually works I will be impressed!!

    ----- - Ignore these lines, they are just to make the diagram work

    _________---_____ -Here gravity is a weight that is just heavy,
    ---------------\/-------- - and it pulls downwards


    In our environment the force must pull in on itself, i.e. be collapsing! It is pulling in on itself from all sides!!

    ----\/
    -->O<
    ----/\


    If Earth has gravity because of it's large mass, then what is it actually pulling on, to keep us on the ground??! Gravity must work by turning things in to nothing!!!
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2003
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  7. blankc Your superior Registered Senior Member

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    I have a feeling it was a pre-civilization era human. People nowadays are tainted with so much idea pollution, not to mention the extreme cynicism and apathy that have become so prevalent. Sometimes a blank slate has advantages, and the arena of novel thought I believe is one of them. When you think you know something sometimes you don't bother exploring other possibilities, or are lead into familiar areas out of comfort.
     
  8. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    Who is the greatest thinker of all time, in your opinion, blankc; that's what this thread is about.
     
  9. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    758
    Freud was also a landmark writer, in my opinion. One of the greatest!
     
  10. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    The essays of Bertrand Russell have always been inspiring to me. An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish is an excellent introdution to him.

    Undoubtedly one of the great free thinkers of the 20th century.
     
  11. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    Thank you for giving this to us Repo Man! I have started to read it, but it's late. I will read it tomorrow though, and I will post my thoughts then.

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  12. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    hmmmm

    Jean Paul Sartre...
    much too depressed to explain why however..

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  13. prozak Banned Banned

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    Newton
    Schopenhauer
    Pascal
    Turing
    Linkola
    Evola
     
  14. Beercules Registered Senior Member

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    Lifegazer is by far the greatest.

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  15. Absane Rocket Surgeon Valued Senior Member

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    I do not have an opinion on who I think the greatest thinker is or was. However, I do believe almost anyone can think great things. It just requires effort.

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    James Sibley
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    You'd have to break this down into categories of thinking to avoid a thirty-way tie. But let me add a name that should be on the list: Carl Jung. He dug down to the kernels of wisdom in Freud's work, threw out the rest, integrated it with what we had already learned during fifty thousand years (or whatever) of being able to talk to each other, and rebuilt psychology into a discipline worthy of being called a philosophy.
     
  17. wellborn Registered Senior Member

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    Hahahha Michelangelo thinker ofcourse. No doubt
     
  18. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    Does reading his work make you bleed from your eyes?

    My list:

    Ayn Rand
    Robert A. Heinlein
    Friedrich Hayek
    Aristotle
    Plato
    Ann Coulter
    David Horowitz
     
  19. EI_Sparks Registered Senior Member

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    1,716
    Galt: Ayn Rand?

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    And which Heinlein? The incredibly liberal one he was in the early years, or the incredibly conservative one he was in his later years?


    Okay, my list, not in any particular order and certainly incomplete...
    Kant, for his ideas on justice;
    Voltaire, More and Erasmus, for their contributions to the Enlightenment and Humanism;
    Bhudda, for bhuddism (duh!);
    Ghandi and King, for showing that force is not the only way to achieve your goals;
    Galileo, for reasserting the place of experimentation over doctrine;
    Russell, for the thoughts mentioned above;
    Adams, for showing capitalism isn't a zero-sum game;
    Hippocrates, for the code of ethics used by doctors;
    Darwin, for evolutionary theory;
    Harvey, for bringing experimentation and observation back to medicine;
    Aristotle, for inventing sophistry and debate, along with the other great Greek philosophers;
    Euclid, for codifying all of the mathematics of his day and providing a model for most of the rest of the mathematical world;
    Bacon, for his contibutions to philosophy (hell, even for Novum alone)
    Einstein, for the concept of relativity;
    Bohr and his contemporaries, for the concept of quantum mechanics;
    Maxwell, just for his equations on electromechanics;
    Marx, for modern communist theory;
    Descartes, for his work on the fundamentals of modern philosophy;
    The "founding fathers" for documents like the Bill of Rights and for founding a country on the principles of the Enlightenment - even if the last fifty years have been a sincere disaster...;
    Gutenberg, Bell, Marconi and Berners-Lee for improving the speed of inter-human communication.
     
  20. thefountainhed Fully Realized Valued Senior Member

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    In all probability, someone unaccounted for in history or someone I haven't yet heard of.
     
  21. exsto_human Transitional Registered Senior Member

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    What's wrong with Hesse?

    I think he deserves atleast a mention.
     
  22. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    So very true, and surely one of the purposes of us being born with a brain; we can choose to do what we like.
    Also very true! I have started to read one of his books and it's intersting to say the least. Some may consider him (and Freud) slightly far fetched, however the more that I myself learn, the more I can see how right they both are!
     
  23. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    Of course. What, are you a commie or something?

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    He always had a Libertarian streak in him.

    Free love, low taxes and lots and lots of guns. How can you go wrong with that?
     

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