(4) Aristotle
Aristotle’s academic lineage alone is enough to get him into the tournament. He was Plato’s brightest pupil and tutored a young Alexander the Great. It wasn’t just who Aristotle knew, though, it was what he knew. With a seemingly boundless enthusiasm for any number of subjects, Aristotle made major breakthroughs in philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, and ethics. On top of that, he pioneered both formal logic and zoology. If you were in Greece in the fourth century B.C. and had a question about pretty much anything, you knew whom to ask.
(5) Marie Curie
Science’s undisputed first lady has a C.V. that may never come along again. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the chemical elements polonium and radium. The tag team also discovered radioactivity, which netted her the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. Even after Pierre’s death in 1906, Marie kept working and eventually isolated pure radium, which won her the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. Her name is still synonymous with radioactivity, a word she coined. Even more impressive: she did it all as a working mother.
The Breakdown
Aristotle’s theories may not have always held up so well – he’d probably love another crack at that whole geocentric universe thing – but he helped look at so many branches of science and philosophy with a special focus on reason that it’s hard to fault him for it. (After all, some of the scientific facts we cling to as hard truths now will surely seem laughable to people in several centuries.) Curie, though, gets points for accuracy, for giving birth to another Nobel Prize winner, and for helping usher in the atomic age. Curie’s already blown up Linus Pauling, and Aristotle jumped over Evel Knievel to make it this far. Who’s going to make it to the next round, though?
[poll=48]
[See the whole bracket here.]
Comments (10)
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Aristotle was and is one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the universe and if he doesn’t manage to beat Curie I am going to have to believe that the people who vote on this thing are pinheads. Which would make me a pinhead by association which I have no interest in becoming.
Come ON people! Aristotle’s ideas affect our lives on a daily basis. When was the last time you had an xray?
posted by Crispin on 3-26-2009 at 10:31 pm
@Crispin: This morning at the dentist. Found 2 cavities.
posted by Josh on 3-26-2009 at 11:14 pm
I can’t believe Curie is ahead. Aristotle has shaped western thinking in every discipline for 2300 years, and Curie discovered one thing, and she didn’t even do that by herself.
posted by Ryan on 3-27-2009 at 12:01 am
What the…? I’m being told I already voted when I haven’t.
posted by -J- on 3-27-2009 at 9:35 am
Fine, people still need xrays, Josh. Aristotle made contributions to theology, logic, aesthetics, astronomy, zoology, physics, and politics. His contributions to logic & political theory have been discussed and examined for thousands of years and will continue to be discussed and examined probably for a thousands more.
posted by Crispin on 3-27-2009 at 10:41 am
Gotta agree with Crispin and Ryan here…
Aristotle shaped the Western world. We are a Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman society, and Aristotle played a huge role in the Christian, Greco, and Roman parts of that…
posted by Scott on 3-27-2009 at 10:57 am
I have to go with Aristotle on the grounds that without him, we may never have had a Curie. Not that he is soely responsible for the modern world, but he shaped how that world was looked at for centuries.
posted by Greg on 3-27-2009 at 12:40 pm
Crispin, Ryam, et al. are, of course, right. Of course Aristotle is a more impiortant thinker by scales of magnitude. Frankly, I blame the description used here for the skewed results. A more fair description would be: invented logic as known to the western world and created the epistemology that allows for all science.
posted by Thomas Reimel on 3-27-2009 at 2:47 pm
Well it’s official; I no longer find a community that I respect and want to be a part of in Mental Floss anymore. I am not sure why Aristotle’s loss to Curie is such a sore point for me (although since I graduated with a Philosophy major that ought to be some clue), but I am doubtful I will spend much time here anymore and I am going to let my subscription lapse also.
Frankly, any community that either votes based on a goof or votes based on ignorance is not one I want to be a part of and not one I want to be associated with.
I thought I found a likeminded community in MF and it appears I was wrong to think I belonged.
Some might think this is a petty reason not to visit or to let a subscription lapse and it is on the surface; a vote didn’t go my way. But ultimately I want to spend my time on the web/reading with a group of people I feel I fit in with and I no longer feel Mental Floss is a place where I belong.
posted by Crispin on 3-31-2009 at 1:59 pm
Where the heck is William James Sidis ?
IMHO, he’s the ultimate genius, albeit not as creative as the others.
posted by Andrey on 4-1-2009 at 9:37 am