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| goodgod3rd |
 Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:32 am Post subject: who is your favourite scientist??? |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 02 Feb 2005
Posts: 899
Location: Donegal Ireland
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this fourm is for history , but all ive seen is the am era!!! so ...
am..
discuss
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| HomoUniversalis |
| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:41 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 23 Oct 2004
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Location: Maastricht, Netherlands
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Favourite scientist? I find this hard, as I do not see how a scientist can really be a favourite. I must honestly confess that I do not go as much to scientific conferences as I would like to, so I can't really say that there are any modern scientists I consider 'favourite'.
What I do feel, however, is a strong preference towards Nietzsche. I just got two of his books, and though I am tempted to start in them right away, I couln't resist coming here for just a wee little time  .
Anyway, if we are saying scientists across all ages, I'm strung between Plato, Descartes, Thales, Plato, Nietzsche, but also Kant, and many others. That's, basically the problem.
Sure, you can say that "Betty and Suzy; mudwrestlers 2" was better than "Betty and Suzy; Mudwrestlers", to name a weird example, but the second would not exist without the first. The same goes for philosophers, eventually, we do base a lot on the knowledge of those that came before us, and there really isn't a philosopher that was truly, completely, unique.
Still, Nietzsche is my favourite  .
Mr U
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| buffstuff |
| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Posts: 164
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow...
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My favorite scientist is the one who made exploxives. Why you ask, no reason, no reason at all...
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| goodgod3rd |
| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:50 am Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 02 Feb 2005
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Location: Donegal Ireland
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i see what you mean , there can be difficult to pick a favourite!!!
explosives you say , it deends which kind.. t.n.t , h bombs??    
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| sploit |
| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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fermi
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| Pendragon |
| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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Paul Vidal de la Blache: a great geographer. Can't say I'm a total fanboy though, I don't know enough about his life n stuff.
Wittgenstein: strange life he had. From extremely rich to extremely poor, from scientist to industrial labourer and back to science again. The classic semi-mad genius. |
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| Jacques.X |
| Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| buffstuff wrote: |
| My favorite scientist is the one who made exploxives. Why you ask, no reason, no reason at all... |
Surprisingly enough, the inventor of explosives (well dynamite anyway) was Alfred Nobel. Yes the same guy who established the Nobel Peace Prize. Sorry, I know it would be more fun to believe in a crazy scientist living in a castle on a hill where its always night and always storming, but oh well, such is life. |
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| Scifor Refugee |
| Posted: Sat May 07, 2005 12:07 am Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 02 May 2005
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| HomoUniversalis wrote: |
| Anyway, if we are saying scientists across all ages, I'm strung between Plato, Descartes, Thales, Plato, Nietzsche, but also Kant, and many others. That's, basically the problem. |
Hmm…I’ll give you Thales, but most of those people were just philosophers, not scientists.
Descartes did a bit of physics, but when you dig into his philosophy he was actually very unscientific; he believed that the best way to figure things out was to simply sit and think about them, rather than trying to perform experiments. He didn’t believe that empirical data could be trusted, and thought that we should be guided by pure reason instead. That’s more or less the opposite of scientific thinking - the whole point of science is to check your ideas against empirical data to see if they hold up. |
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| Geodesic |
| Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 09 May 2005
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Location: Edinburgh, UK
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| If I had to pick one... Richard Feynmann, he tells a great anecdote. It's also amazing (and a little annoying) how talented he was. |
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| Abraxas |
| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 21 Apr 2005
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| Quote: |
| What I do feel, however, is a strong preference towards Nietzsche |
Freidrich was a scientist? If that's science then......we'd still be in caves.
Geodisic:
| Quote: |
| If I had to pick one... Richard Feynmann, he tells a great anecdote. It's also amazing (and a little annoying) how talented he was. |
YES!!!!
A bon vivant!
A curly haired leprachuan, he's the Wonka with a nuclear plant factory.
Feynmann Rules!! If only scientists retained their childhoold magic as he did, the curiousity, the yen to know. |
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| invert_nexus |
| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 21 Apr 2005
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Heh. Yeah. That's pretty funny. Nietsche. A scientist. Where do they come up with this stuff?
Anyway. I'd have to go with Tesla being my favorite scientist. He was bitter rivals with Edison, as some may be well aware, and was soundly defeated by Edison's business sense. But Edison was nothing compared to Tesla. Edison was a manager, not a scientist. Edison used scientists. Tesla was a scientist.
And not just a scientist. Tesla was a man who loved digging into the nature of things. He played with the world in the way that only a true scientist can. And he took enjoyment from his work in the way that only a worthy scientist (or any other profession for that matter) does.
Have you heard about Tesla's work with resonance frequencies? It got him evicted from his laboratory in Manhattan when he attached a device to a structural girder of the building and 'tuned' it to the frequency of his building.
"I was experimenting with vibrations. I had one of my machines going and I wanted to see if I could get it in tune with the vibration of the building. I put it up notch after notch. There was a peculiar cracking sound.
"I asked my assistants where did the sound come from. They did not know. I put the machine up a few more notches. There was a louder cracking sound. I knew I was approaching the vibration of the steel building. I pushed the machine a little higher. "Suddenly all the heavy machinery in the place was flying around. I grabbed a hammer and broke the machine. The building would have been about our ears in another few minutes. Outside in the street there was pandemonium.
"The police and ambulances arrived. I told my assistants to say nothing. We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it." Source.
Now that is just... sweet. It takes a special kind of brilliant fool to be so reckless in the pursuit of knowledge.
And how can one forget his later years in Colorado striving in vain to create his death ray? I'd love to have seen him stabbing the sky with lightning in the early days of this century.
Tesla had balls.
Big huge hairy Croatian balls.
But no business sense.
He died broke in a hotel room.
Despite all the achievements he made throughout his life.
Despite the fact that he invented the very type of electric current that you are using right now to power your computer.
The man loved science.
The man was science.
The man was a scientist.
My favorite scientist. |
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| Starthane Xyzth |
| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 12:25 am Post subject: |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 16
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Favourite? Probably Johann Kepler for me, because I love planets.
Or Isaac newton, because he was such a polymath as well as a ground-breaker.
Or Carl Sagan, because I love his writing.
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| spidergoat |
| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 10:12 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 183
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Richard Feynmann,
Tesla is a good one, and
Buckminster Fuller |
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| craterchains |
| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 8:56 am Post subject: |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 65
Location: Tacoma, WA, usa
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I'll go with Bucky Fuller and Tesla.
But my real favorite is the one that bioengineered me. 
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| (Q) |
| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 9:13 am Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 12 May 2005
Posts: 1362
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But my real favorite is the one that bioengineered me.
A test-tube baby!?  |
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