Past Geniuses

Freddie Mcinerney

Of Newton or Boyle, or other past scientists, fell to Earth today. How long would it take them to be up to date to progress at a current university?

KieferFan69

Probably be watching sheeran videos on their mobiles

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118403890#Comment_118403890

Lol. Likely Pink Floyd or Iron Maiden fans. Not Ed. Possibly Justin.

KieferFan69

I could see them jivin with timbaland alright

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118403953#Comment_118403953

J is handy on the acoustic guitar.

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058225421/past-geniuses

with the internet and everything that brings, I'd say Newton would go off the deep end, tinfoil-hat nuttery, He'd probably have been banned from Boards a few times

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118404142#Comment_118404142

Doubt it. Like Galilei he would use the scientific method to prove his point. It was them that brought knowledge away from suspicion.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118404498#Comment_118404498

Maybe, though Newton was extremely religious to a degree that would be out of step today. He was also a bloody weirdo on top and ended up with no friends because of his behaviour and general oddness. It's hard to say how easily he'd fit in. I suspect it would be difficult. I suspect someone like Leonardo DaVinci would after some WTF!! shock at the changes in the interim would likely fit in pretty well.

osarusan

If they fell to earth as adults in their 40s or whatever, they'd be hopelessly out of place and backwards for quite some time, and I'm not sure they'd ever fully catch up. Imagine how long it would take them just to get used to using a computer.

If they had been born say 40 years ago, and grown up in the same education system as the rest of us, I suppose their innate capacity for intelligence would see them to the top of the class very quickly.

Gregor Samsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118404498#Comment_118404498

Ask anyone what the colours of the rainbow are, and they’ll name 7: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. As first named by Newton.

But if you actually look at a real rainbow, you’ll only be able to make out 6 discrete colours; after blue, it’s straight into violet. Indigo is a dark purple colour that just isn’t there.

Newton had occult beliefs in how the universe and its laws should behave, and he attached a special significance to the number 7. He firmly believed that refracted white light should have 7 constituent parts, even though he could only differentiate 6 himself. So he threw in “indigo” between blue and violet to make the 7, just to satisfy his occult beliefs.

AckwelFoley

I think there is something beautiful if Sir Isaac Newton fell to Earth.

Shortly before the impact kills him he will probably be ironically happy his mathematical theory was correct

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118404995#Comment_118404995

Wasn't Newton involved with science article promotion?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405133#Comment_118405133

Hehe

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405068#Comment_118405068

Interesting. Thanks.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405020#Comment_118405020

I'm sure they pick up computing easily. They would have an innate understanding of binary notation. Something many others don't.

banie01

Take

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Ramunjan as an example maybe?

From a relatively poor and certainly an example of prodigious genius occurring for want of a better example in the wild, in a relatively minor and certainly unsophisticated backwater who blossomed and upon entering mainstream research, changed the world.

The difference in Technology between 1CE and 1810CE isn't that huge, the difference between 1810 and 2020 is akin to magical. I do believe however that any person can grasp the new reality with sufficient time and instruction. The prodigious intellect and intuition displayed by many genius would enable them to grasp it faster and leap ahead again.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405068#Comment_118405068

You could take it even further and consider the naming of the colours themselves. Orange didn't exist as a separate colour until the 1500's. Blue, violet and indigo would have been seen as pretty much the same colour until relatively recently and for much of human history(and in some cultures even today) blue and green were named as the same thing. Go back a couple of thousand years and a rainbow could well have been named and seen as being red, yellow and green.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405404#Comment_118405404

That is all well and good. Argument is that individuals that progress knowledge, would surely function to a high level in the current education system?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405364#Comment_118405364

I believe China fell behind due to lack of reading glasses. Wibbs likely know more.

Freddie Mcinerney

Surely George Ohm would excel higher than a sparky.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058225421/past-geniuses

They’d find grievance studies fairly easy.

in science It would take them an under graduate course to come up to speed on under graduate science, then a masters and PhD is a certainty.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405308#Comment_118405308

Nobody needs that to operate a computer anyway. Not a difficult feat

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406057#Comment_118406057

They would understand what they study.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406069#Comment_118406069

I agree.

Hidden gem of a book that brings rainbows, history of science, Greek mythology, philosophy and wonder together: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674955622

In three instructive instances—a pair of paintings by Cy Twombly, the famous problem of doubling the area of a square, and the history of attempts to explain rainbows—Philip Fisher examines the experience of wonder as it draws together pleasure, thinking, and the aesthetic features of thought. Through these examples he places wonder in relation to the ordinary and the everyday as well as to its opposite, fear. The remarkable story of how rainbows came to be explained, fraught with errors, half-knowledge, and incomplete understanding, suggests that certain knowledge cannot be what we expect when wonder engages us. Instead, Fisher argues, a detailed familiarity, similar to knowing our way around a building or a painting, is the ultimate meeting point for aesthetic and scientific encounters with novelty, rare experiences, and the genuinely new.

Freddie Mcinerney

The past scientists and engineers were pioneers. Current crop are applying past discoveries.

I would invite Newton around for tea, but I'd keep the lights low and before hand would have tied several items in the room with bits of string and have an accomplice ready and hiding in the background.

While Newton and I chat away and I bring him up to speed on serveral centuries of sceince and mathematics (all of which I would make up on the spot), items of fruit, glasses and other bits and bobs would slowly lift from the shelves/ground, float for a bit and come back down as my accomplice pulls the string gently to and fro. I would deny all of this of course, suggest to Newton that he had been overworking, that the time travel must be playing with his senses, and generally pooh pooh the whole thing.

That should slow him down a bit. :D

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406241#Comment_118406241

Lol. How about Faraday?

Hold that thought. working on one for Einstein... remote control that changes the speed and direction at which the hands go round an electric clock...

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406123#Comment_118406123

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406021#Comment_118406021

They might, or they might be above average university lecturers or the like. Timing is everything. Or a lot of it. Today, while there is of course many many things left to be discovered the various sciences are much more spread out and with many many more people involved. Being a pioneer is harder. Look at personal computing. People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like were born just at the right time and place to become pioneers. If they'd been born ten years earlier or later or in India or Ireland it would have almost certainly passed them by, or they wouldn't have been among the pioneers of personal computing. If you were a very average computer geek of the same age and hanging out with those guys in the 70's and stuck around, chances are you'd be very wealthy today and on some wiki about early pioneers of the PC revolution.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406035#Comment_118406035

Their lack of expertise with glass didn't help alright(they had porcelain so didn't really bother). Much of it was cultural though. Compared to Europe social mobility in China was very low. If you were a farmer and came up with a better mousetrap it would do you little good because you weren't a mousetrap maker. Where they did have social mobility in the vast state exams to get ahead in their bureaucracy the thinking was extremely rigid so innovation was frowned upon. Their deeper philosophy in the nature of reality was different too. European thought had picked up a very different angle from the Greeks. The Greeks considered reality to be ultimately understandable(which was a wild concept at the time and for most of the world), Chinese philosophy didn't to nearly the same degree.

And they were an empire. This made them more inward looking and centralised and rigid. Europe had Rome, but Rome fell, but at the same time didn't as far as religion went. So Europe ended up with a load of competing states, with a background "empire of the soul" and a load of those states wanted a return to Rome(with them running things of course). This drove serious competition and that drives innovation and with a much greater social mobility and growing middle class it kept going. Then after a while og bating the shíte out of each other got too expensive they decided to build empires overseas which gave us the age of exploration. China had already had such an age. It sent out huge ships that explored the pacific, came home and... well feck all. They didn't need an empire, they already had one thanks very much.

Culture can make such a difference. Look at the printing press. The Chinese had it(IIRC it was a Korean invention) and did little with it beyond banknotes(cool) and some religious texts and it's a bit of a pain in the arse because of how many characters you need to make. The idea travels along the Silk road through the Islamic world where it does nada. Why? Well Arabic was also a bit of a pain to print, but mostly because there was too much cash in hand scribing books so the scribes put the kibosh on it. Then it hits Europe. Twenty odd letters and you can print nearly everything, all those competing nations, mucho dinero to be made and a storm brewing in the church(though they used printing for indulgences so even more cahs came in) and when a down at heel sometime conman silversmith tweaks the process to make it much better you get the first great information revolution since the invention of writing.

But I digress... 😂

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406123#Comment_118406123

that assumes we have discovered all there is to to be discovered. that is not true.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406277#Comment_118406277

Yes he admitted that. And acknowledged it I guess.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406780#Comment_118406780

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406780#Comment_118406780

Perhaps quantum mechanics and graphene. Getting to lower levels of the ocean or another planet, not.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118406766#Comment_118406766

Wibbs we bow to your vaste range of understanding knowledge and concepts. Maybe at times you play the devil advocate.

Freddie Mcinerney

I'm sure Samuel Hunter Christie do ok in college now.

Victor

I'm not certain any such person would be profoundly remarkable - we remember them because they were first to do X. With time, there would have been others that discovered these things.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405404#Comment_118405404

Do you mean blue and black?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407181#Comment_118407181

Been the first, in my book, is more remarkable than utilising what was more available.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118405246#Comment_118405246

Only if by promotion you mean hiding his discoveries and attacking others.

You can argue about who invented calculus first but we use Leibniz's notation because he was the first to publish his work. So maths lectures would be fun.

Today he'd probably be using dried frog pills to cure Covid.

growleaves

Universities are conformist and intolerant of eccentrics now. Odd people like Newton or Wittgenstein wouldn't find a place for themselves if they were starting from scratch today. They'd be fired or more likely not hired in the first place.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407240#Comment_118407240

I wasn't on about his calculus work or theory of gravity. More that he involved with scientific research by having papers published.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407248#Comment_118407248

Because more brilliant than their supervisor?

Economics101

I wonder how Leonardo Da Vinci would get on now, assuming he got enough points in the Leaving to chose any course he wanted?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407416#Comment_118407416

Would he stick to the science, arts and architecture, or go stock market?

Water John

Presume he would be fine as he would have used both hands to write at the same time. There's certainly a disconnect between formal education a business success. Juckerberg, collison Bros etc never finished third level.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407388#Comment_118407388

Yeah but it's more than that. No institution of today will put up with weird people or make concessions for them.

Yet geniuses almost always have awkward personalities

When Wittgenstein had a chair at Cambridge in the sixties he was allowed to choose the size of his tutorials and which students he'd agree to teach. He was left alone to theorise mostly.

Right now professors are expected to fulfill a lot of bureaucratic duties apart from lecturing, to be politically correct and, like all careerists, function as their own PR machine - be slick, in other words.

I couldn't see Newton especially navigating that kind of environment.

And besides broadly speaking 'we' don't really want geniuses anymore and the streamlined way in which everything is presented as an incontestable consensus means we won't get any. There is no room for the weirdo who questions corporate conclusions.

Wibbs is totally wrong about meritocracy in China. It was far more meritocratic that Europe, but mostly through the exam system. So it didn’t encourage entrepreneurs.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407416#Comment_118407416

He really would’nt need the esame di stato. The problem with Da Vinci today would be that his realistic artwork wouldn’t be in fashion. That said he might be clever enough to smatter some paint on a canvas, or stencil political cartoons on walls, so he may have made a living.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407378#Comment_118407378

Most of the great discoveries were made in 1665-1667 while hiding from the plague at home. Principa wasn't published until 20 years later.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407511#Comment_118407511

An Andrew Wyeth (20th century) realist portrait can sell for $85 million. There is still a big realist market.

In any case I don't think Da Vinci would produce cynical anti-art, though I get that you might just be joking.

Economics101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407511#Comment_118407511

I was thinking more of his abilities in the technological area: aeronautical engineering springs to mind.