Past Geniuses

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407485#Comment_118407485

Indeed Fyp, but it as you say was a meritocracy pretty much only in that regard(or if a warlord got lucky) and entrepreneurs were thin on the ground by comparison. The major problem being the exam setup was incredibly rigid, worked almost exclusively on "accepted truths" for centuries and compliance is seen as a virtue in confucianism, and the first thing innovation and innovators do is look at accepted truths and feck 'em out the window, ruffling feathers as they do so. That wouldn't go over well at all for much of the history of Chinese culture. In Europe there would be fewer feathers ruffled and if the innovation looked like it could make coin, or get a jump on enemies, feathers bedamned. So you could have a bloke like Descartes(cogito, ergo sum) philosopher, maths giant and all around good egg by all accounts, who also advanced the accuracy of artillery. I hear Rene's doin' some mad thinking again? Oh aye but now our cannon can blow the shíte out of the Prussians so fair play to him and let him at it.

Leo DaVinci's CV lists many things, cos well, him, but his practical military stuff was much of his selling point. And special effects for stage plays of all things. Painting was down the list.

Galileo? Well known for pendulums and pissing off the church(though that's a lot more compelx than post reformation Protestant slants hold) and telescopes. With the latter he made a small fortune. Not from star gazing but from flogging said telescopes to merchants who would stand on roofs in places like Venice and watch to see the ships come in and what cargos they had to set the price before anyone else who didn't have telescopes could. Ker-feckin-ching! In China at the same time they'd have faced many more barriers. Both cultures were wary of eccentrics, but where China generally only tolerated them if they went full Tao and sat up a mountain eating moss, Europe was much more tolerant of them and had far more avenues for them to shine.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. China; about the most sophisticated culture and places on the planet and doing cool stuff when most Europeans were living in trees eating fleas off each other. Greece and Rome very much balanced things out*, but then Rome fell and in the "Dark Ages"(don't get me started...) the Tang dynasty had blast furnaces and paper and porcelain and printing, while Europe seemed to forget to make basic pottery for a while and were seemingly back to seeing fleas as a food group. But by the late medieval things were afoot and by the renaissance things really got going and Europe streaked ahead. If you took a Chinese peasant of the 12th century in a time machine to the 18th he or she would find little different in their world. If you did the same with a European peasant they'd need several stiff drinks and a moment to take it all in.

*the interesting thing about China when they found out about Rome, or Daqin/Dagin(sp?) was they expected it. They assumed there would be a natural balance to their culture at the other end of the world, the yin to their yang as it were. One official Chinese envoy got as far as the eastern Mediterranean, but was put off from travelling any further by locals, or more likely he thought feck this, I'm going home. He reported that Rome was like China, industrious and strong, which went down well back home. That said a few years ago they found a burial in Rome and one of the researchers spotted that he looked east Asian and it turned out he was. So at least one lad ended up there. Lord knows what we have lost to the dust of time. Given that China and Rome were at the terminal ends of the silk road it would be a shock if there wasn't more contact. Silk was a big deal in Rome, especially among the ladies. One old Italian commentator wound himself up over the fact that the young women were wearing silks so see through that little was left to the imagination. Play ball I would have said. 😁

Balmed Out

I think we underestimate the shock in trying to come to terms with a completely changed world both culturally and technologically. They'd be doing well to keep sane and somewhat functional.

Most of these guys were not just painters or astronomers etc but had a wide array of interest's and probably would have lacked the focus to specialize in one or two particular fields. De Vinci is best known as a painter but from what I know was at least or more interested in engineering, town planning and warcraft and would often not finish a painting getting side tracked with anatomy or some other pursuit.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407591#Comment_118407591

A two year window?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407480#Comment_118407480

Richard Feynman was allowed to attend college.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118407591#Comment_118407591

Sorry I half read earlier. Still my argument be that Newton and other great scientists would excel in modern day education system if they came here as adults.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118408793#Comment_118408793

Newton was shall we say 'excentric'. Never had sex because that's where his pee came from. Went out of his way to have people hung drawn and quartered during his time at the mint. Mad in to get rich quick schemes even though he was loaded.

Markus Antonius

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

This was meant as a jibe against Robert Hooke (a self consciously short man) by Newton. Newton was notorious for not crediting the work of others in his publications (Robert Hooke especially - from whom he took a lot of inspiration and even admits in a letter to removing Hooke's name as a contributor to Principia out of spite for the man)

Newton was a particularly petty and unlikable person compared to others of his era, specifically Robert Hooke and Ed Halley who many consider to be true geniuses. Many of these scientists were coffee addicts as coffee shops were very popular social venues at the time, so I can imagine their first port of call would be the local cafe to try out a mocha-latte-frappachino

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118408829#Comment_118408829

Would he fair out well at current college system?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118408937#Comment_118408937

I must apologise for using Newton as a name example. Could be any past scientists or engineers.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118408937#Comment_118408937

I'm sure Hooke and the other Robert, Sir Boyle (he was a Sir?) would excel at education institutions now if they came here in their 40s. Even their 20s.

Investigative reports

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

It's only recently that only those regarded as dumbarses were religious. Back in the day all the great scientists believed in god.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118409084#Comment_118409084

It was also the case that people in religious orders having lots of time and resources to investigate God's creation to better know him. The threat of an auto-da-fé made it a lot easier to publicly admit to believing in God back then.

Funny enough we could go further back, to pre-Christian times, all the way to Ancient Greece and there we would find Aristotle, who despite having more to catch up on than the likes of Newton, or Descartes, would do well today, IMO due to his sensible nature and the rigors of his truth-seeking methods.

But yes, Christinaity has produced some brilliant scientists as they explore what they believe to be God's creation. Makes perfect sense that Christians can be and are good scientists, if people drop oversimplistic depictions of religion and science.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118409084#Comment_118409084

How about Galileo? Perhaps he believed in God. However he question the Church on the mechism of the universe.

marieholmfan

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

A year or so. But they would find having to specialise jarring. Even Newton couldn't be Newton today.

That higher maths stuff is like athletics and music ; hard work helps but natural ability is everything.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118409063#Comment_118409063

Newton was an impressive mathematician and very eloquent writer unlike Hooke who was very scattered and unfocused. Hooke was an impressive architect and after London burned down - the rebuild took up a lot of his time while others such as Newton and Halley capitalised with their publication of Principia. Newton also had close ties with Henry Oldenburg who was secretary of the Royal Society (and who hated Robert Hooke, as did Hooke hate him). Oldenburg was a terrible troublemaker and was always trying to brew up controversy between Hooke and Newton. He often misrepresented or neglected to properly document discoveries and inventions that Hooke submitted.

That whole era was like a soap opera with drama and controversy at every turn. I can imagine if any of them were alive today they would be incredibly bored! (esp. with covid and the pandemic of people's phone addictions)

I recommend the book "Out of the Shadow of a Giant" by John and Mary Gribbin. It gives a really good account of the drama between all these men (albeit slightly biased towards Robert Hooke)

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118409881#Comment_118409881

Galileo was a pretty devout Catholic and remained so throughout his life. Copernicus the same. In his case he even studied to be a priest and dedicated his published theory on heliocentricism to the pope of the time, who was very interested in it. Interestingly Martin Luthor considered Galileo's theory completely off the wall, what with the newly minted Protestantism being much more literal about scripture. The Catholic angle was more about interpretation(by them of course), which was one reason they wound up the Protestants. Consider today in somewhere like the US, who is more likely to believe in the literal truth of Noah and the flood, Genesis, the Earth is only 4000 years old and all that, a Catholic or a Protestant? Galileo got into trouble not so much over the science, but because of a series of letters between him and a woman of the Medici family IIRC, where she raised the religious scriptural issues with the theory and he took on the theological stuff. That was the Church's territory. That's what wound them up, not the science. His heresy trial lasted barely a day and his charge was bumped down to suspicion of heresy. The pope stayed out of it as did a few cardinals and Galileo kept a few friends in the church throughout.

Much of our collective view of Galileo and his trial and the Church are a mix of Reformation and later Enlightenment spin whihc naturally took more root as western societies became less religious and atheistic, so it's a handy tale to spin that the Church and religion in general was always holding science back. It's a lot more complex than that. Even the earlier mentioned Newton, a dyed in the wool Protestant namechecked Catholic scholars many of them actual priests as among those giants he stood on the shoulders of.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118411264#Comment_118411264

Thank you for the book suggestion.

Any person that come up with a gas law or wheatstone bridge be well equipped in todays education system.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118411378#Comment_118411378

Thank you Wibbs. Very Knowledgeable. I will have a question when have your thesis absorbed.

silliussoddius

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

He’d be accused of being a shill for big gravity.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118410928#Comment_118410928

I thought them not expecting to specialise to be to their advantage. Do what the university pay them during the 40 hours weekly for commercial base research. And them do their own at the weekend.

Come to think of it. Those past works are now the foundation of current technologies.

Remind me of that movie where the guy tried to fly from a high building. The ignorance at the time people laugh at him.

Freddie Mcinerney

Silli who cares if what he does is promoted by evidence.

dickdasr1234

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

Innate?

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118424889#Comment_118424889

10 type of people.

souter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118411264#Comment_118411264

And when season one starts to flag, bring in cosmopolitan polymath Leibniz and watch the sparks fly as he wrestles Newton over the paternity of calculus.

BurgerFace

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

Why would it take them any longer to get used to using a computer than anybody in the modern era who never used one and then suddenly started using one? I didn't touch a computer before I went to university. After a couple of weeks I was coding on a mainframe. You think Newton couldn't grasp that?

fryup

John Lennon genius, Andy Warhol genius, Francis Bacon genius, Picasso genius, Salvador Dali genius, Peter Sellers genius, Stanley Kubrick genius, David Lean genius, Stephen King Genius, Marlon Brando Genius, Jack Nicholson Genius

not many geniuses knocking about these days cause you have a generation of kids playing xbox & playstation instead of being creative in art & music and the like😕

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118425561#Comment_118425561

Exactly, and they would understand 10 type of people.

CGI_Livia_Soprano

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118411718#Comment_118411718

[citation needed]

vriesmays

BF Skinner - the world's greatest psychologist. Everything's from the environment. We're all products of external conditioning. Anyone can be a doctor or bank robber.