Who do you think were the most influencial persons in human history?

[Severian]

The main comment

My main comment (after reading your post) is that you chose some criteria. And I chose (in my previous post) some different criteria. I completely disagree with your criteria, and you disagree with mine. So, it appears that to give a rating of who-is-more-influential-than-who seems a very subjective matter!

 

You must admit though, you are being deliberately obtuse. Almost everyone's view of the world has been affected, at least indirectly, by Jesus, while hardly anyone has been affected by Feynman (his role in developing the bomb was rather minor).

 

I suppose if you dispute Jesus was a real person, you would have an argument, that that is a whole different kettle of fish...

[CaptainPanic]

You must admit though, you are being deliberately obtuse. Almost everyone's view of the world has been affected, at least indirectly, by Jesus, while hardly anyone has been affected by Feynman (his role in developing the bomb was rather minor).

I admit.

 

Let's take a better example: Jesus vs. Socrates, who is the most influential?

 

The one started the World's largest religion, the other enabled science as we know it.

 

My point was not to prove that Feynman is the world's most influential person, because he is probably not. My point was that we can debate this forever, but if we don't agree on the method of comparison, we will never agree on the outcome. Shouldn't the purpose of a thread in a scienceforum be that we try to achieve some kind of consensus? Otherwise, the OP should have asked for our favorite famous people - "favorite" is a clearly subjective word, and leaves no room to disagree.

[Severian]

I think the measure the OP was probably implicitly alluding to was the amount the candidate person changed the world. Or in other words, had the person not lived, by how much would today's world be different?

[Bill Angel]

Here is perhaps an interesting statistic

 

I did a google image search on the phrase "Jesus tattoo".

It returned 5,940,000 hits i.e. images of persons who have some depiction of Jesus tattooed on their bodies.

The same search on Richard Feynman returned NO examples of persons who have gotten his portrait tatooed on their bodies.

People HAVE however gotten Feynman Diagrams tattooed on their bodies.

[Alan McDougall]

I admit.

 

Let's take a better example: Jesus vs. Socrates, who is the most influential?

 

The one started the World's largest religion, the other enabled science as we know it.

 

My point was not to prove that Feynman is the world's most influential person, because he is probably not. My point was that we can debate this forever, but if we don't agree on the method of comparison, we will never agree on the outcome. Shouldn't the purpose of a thread in a scienceforum be that we try to achieve some kind of consensus? Otherwise, the OP should have asked for our favorite famous people - "favorite" is a clearly subjective word, and leaves no room to disagree.

 

Google Search gave below results, check for yourself?

 

Jesus Christ 135 000 000 in .14 seconds

 

Richard Feynman 848 000 in .21 seconds

 

Soctrates 5 730 00 in .20 Seconds

 

The above speaks for itself does it not?

[ydoaPs]

the fire guy

the soap guy

the wheel guy

[Ringer]

Google Search gave below results, check for yourself?

 

Jesus Christ 135 000 000 in .14 seconds

 

Richard Feynman 848 000 in .21 seconds

 

Soctrates 5 730 00 in .20 Seconds

 

The above speaks for itself does it not?

 

Not at all, because many of the ones about about Jesus are also negative. Also by that criteria, a Google search of Muhammed gives 261,000,000 (.17 sec) so he is more important.

 

[edit] Just to point out that I was using the Muhammed point to refute the other one and not to say Muhammed actually is more important. So another example:

 

Mars gives 159,000,000 in .20 sec and Hitler gives 136,000,000 [/edit]

Edited July 11, 2012 by Ringer

[KatzAndMice]

On a science forum prophets arent as influential as scientist's;

 

Nikola Tesla would get my vote

 

You are kidding right?

 

What made you think i was kidding?

[Alan McDougall]

Not at all, because many of the ones about about Jesus are also negative. Also by that criteria, a Google search of Muhammed gives 261,000,000 (.17 sec) so he is more important.

 

[edit] Just to point out that I was using the Muhammed point to refute the other one and not to say Muhammed actually is more important. So another example:

 

Mars gives 159,000,000 in .20 sec and Hitler gives 136,000,000 [/edit]

 

 

 

That is exactly the purpose of this thread; I want your opinion on who you think was the most influential person in human history? I agree that most historians put Muhammad as the most influential person in history, I just disagree and say in my opinion Jesus was the most influential. Hitler belongs on the list also because he had enormous influence on history but only in the past 75 years or so. Jesus influenced mankind in a profound way for the past 2000 years, Muhammad for less only the past 1200 years or so. Thus in the grand order of human history, who was the most influential one must take all the relevant factors into consideration.

 

Start your own list I would find it very interesting?

 

Mars is not a person!! not part of the topic!

 

On a science forum prophets arent as influential as scientist's;

 

Nikola Tesla would get my vote

 

 

 

What made you think i was kidding?

 

This is the lounge right, where anything can be discussed or are you a moderator and correcting me in some way?

Edited July 12, 2012 by Alan McDougall

[Ringer]

That is exactly the purpose of this thread; I want your opinion on who you think was the most influential person in human history? I agree that most historians put Muhammad as the most influential person in history, I just disagree and say in my opinion Jesus was the most influential. Hitler belongs on the list also because he had enormous influence on history but only in the past 75 years or so. Jesus influenced mankind in a profound way for the past 2000 years, Muhammad for less only the past 1200 years or so. Thus in the grand order of human history, who was the most influential one must take all the relevant factors into consideration.

 

But with that logic Moses would be more influential due to being such a large part of Judaism (is that the right term? I can never remember). It just seems you are not putting Jesus as the most influential person in history, but the most influential person for you. Not that it's a bad thing whatsoever, but the influence of a person for the human race, as the question is framed, and the

influence for certain people are vastly different topics.

 

Start your own list I would find it very interesting?

 

I would feel dishonest if I made a list because there isn't such a person, or persons, in my opinion. But I suppose just for arguments sake:

 

1.) The person who had the idea to first migrate out of Africa (beginning human expansion)

2.) The people who started selectively breeding plants for agriculture (presumably multiple people on different continents)

3.) Anyone who teaches the ability to think, criticize, and reason instead of teaching only information.

 

Mars is not a person!! not part of the topic!

 

Mars is the god of war, the planet was named after him.

 

 

 

 

[padren]

Google Search gave below results, check for yourself?

 

Jesus Christ 135 000 000 in .14 seconds

 

Richard Feynman 848 000 in .21 seconds

 

Soctrates 5 730 00 in .20 Seconds

 

The above speaks for itself does it not?

 

Search results aside, you seem to be using a metric that includes popularity - not only who is most influential, but is commonly known as such. For instance Galen is well known by name (unlike whomever invented fire) but his name isn't well known to most... yet he had a tremendous impact on the course of western civilization, if for no other reason than because as a result of his work, a lot more people lived and went on to influence the world their own ways.

I would not be surprised if many of the people who made Jesus influential in the first 1000 years of Christianity owe their lives to the influence of Galen's work.

Additionally, for all the good things Galen was able to contribute to medicine, he also got enough things wrong that aspects of medical treatment were arguably stunted - leading to a lot of other people dying of bloodletting than may have otherwise.

 

He was not just an early practitioner of medicine, but an early pioneer of the practice of medicine.

 

While the topic is an interesting way to examine the impacts of lots of people and consider them, it has very little value as a competitively ranked list - to determine who is more influential, you have to examine a million versions of Bizarro-Earth that are entirely theoretical. While some arguments may still be easy enough to refute if they contain internal contradictions or fallacies, most evaluations are "equallyish valid and untestable" and reflect more about the person's unique definition of influence than it contributes to establishing a broader consensus with a common definition of influence.

 

It's a pretty subjective topic at any depth - for instance, who was more influential, Jesus, or the people who wrote his stories down?

 

You could argue they would never have written a thing without Jesus, but no one would even know who Jesus was if they hadn't written about him.

 

Additionally, for all the stories around Jesus, those people who picked through and selected the texts that eventually became the New Testament could easily have had a greater impact than Jesus himself. The fact that those people could have added, removed, or edited any of the texts ascribed to Jesus (whether or not they did) had to have had a huge impact on everything we know today about Jesus.

 

Of course, I have no idea what those Bizarro-Earths would actually look like, but I think there would be some pretty radically different ones as a result.

 

For an extra layer of subjectivity - even if someone is a Muslim that doesn't think about Jesus at all, what influence did the Catholic Church, with the holy crusades and whatnot have on Islam? It may have been inevitable that some major western power would go tromping through that part of the world had the Catholic Church not been seeded early to fill the vacuum, but in our history Christianity has had a huge impact (wanted or not) on the eventual shaping of contemporary Islam... which undoubtedly worked both ways.

 

It's a fun topic, but definitely quite subjective.

Edited July 13, 2012 by padren

[too-open-minded]

1. Martin Luther

3. Johnothan swift

 

you left them out.

 

 

 

[CaptainPanic]

Google Search gave below results, check for yourself?

 

Jesus Christ 135 000 000 in .14 seconds

 

Richard Feynman 848 000 in .21 seconds

 

Soctrates 5 730 00 in .20 Seconds

 

The above speaks for itself does it not?

 

Lady Gaga, 448,000,000 in .41 seconds

 

I think it says a lot about popularity, but nothing about influence.

[KatzAndMice]

This is the lounge right, where anything can be discussed or are you a moderator and correcting me in some way?

 

Nope, just pointing out simple facts.