Politicians and kings rarely do something they weren’t forced to, and inventors are rarely without competition, so I take issue with most of the responses here.
Instead, I’ll go with naval officer Vasily Arkhipov, who, if he had decided to agree with the normal officers of the submarine he happened to be on, would have started a hot Cold War on 27 October, 1962.
Then again, there was a separate, slightly less severe close call the same day, so if you butterfly that who knows what else happens. It was a crazy time where few understood nuclear diplomacy and cold warfare, but nukes were ubiquitous, and were being treated like normal weapons. We got lucky.
There was another noteworthy case with Stanislav Petrov.
Yup. That one had a bit more wiggle room, though, because his superiors might have just come to the same conclusion he did. The other incident marked likely on the Wikipedia list is actually from France, which is almost funny to me. Can you imagine France doing a first strike out of nowhere?
Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman
I’ll have to argue that Santos Dumont and others inventors did Open Source in the XIX.
But compared to one of those. Who did the biggest impact?
I dont know them and maybe they made a much greater impact.
Dumont was a prolific Brazilian-French inventor. Among his most famous achievements are several lighter-than-air flights and flying machines (blimps), as well as a potential claim as the inventor of the first airplane.
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Yes. That Stallman is arguably one of the top few people why we have the internet as it is, at all today.
Most other people could be “replaced”. If it wasn’t X, it would be Y. But only Stallman pushed the copyleft license onto Linux. Only Stallman’s organization popularized it.
So yes, that sexist, neurodivergent, bigoted Stallman, is one of the most positively influential people of our time.
A person needn’t be good in order to do good things, just as a good person doesn’t necessarily impact the world positively simply by existing.
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You’re wrongly assuming that the opinion of one man on a subject he has no sway in is relevant to more than IRC discussions.
Mathematicians, Physicists, Scientists, and Astronomers: Good effort everyone. The foundation of a rational world.
Very Notable Mentions:
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Chemist: Fritz Haber. 1/3 of world food production today can be attributed to his discovery. Also an enormous negative impact, see German Chemical Warfare.
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Biologist: Gregor Mendel. Monk who discovered the basis for genetics.
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Ecologist: Charles Darwin. Discovered the theory of evolution.
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Philosopher: Socrates. Critical Thinking.
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Computers: Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and Alan Turing. See empowerment of computation and relegating ridiculously complex math and data collection to machines.
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Computer Networking: J. C. R. Licklider, DARPA, and Tim Berners-Lee. See Internet and I/O on a global scale. Both positive and negative.
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Finally, the largest net positive of all: Artists. Yes, artists. Popularity as the prime determinant by nature of their work. For inspiration, desire, meaning, peace, community, and emotion. The language of all, an instinctive form of communication.
My visual pick is Leonardo da Vinci as both a practical and artistic contributor. As for classical, it’s nearly impossible to pick, but I’d say Beethoven and then Bach.
Tim Berners-Lee is an excellent choice
Kinda settin the bar a little high here for Lemmy posts, ain’tcha?
We’re all here trying to make the place nicer. I think we’re all contributing what we can to make the place what we want it to be.
For me, I want a psychologically safe place where I can have fun, share my ideas, and learn something new. Especially learning interesting tidbits that can lead me down a rabbit hole of knowledge. So that’s what I’m doing. Here’s hoping a snagged a few people off to wonderland.
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Norman borlaug and Fritz Haber. The first was basically the father of modern agriculture helping feed over a billion people. The latter known as the man that saved billions and killed millions, helped develop the haber bosch process that produces ammonia used in fertillizers that are responsible for feeding half the world’s population. It was also used in explosives hence the “killed millions” part.
Is that the guy that discovered the gas used in the Holocaust?
Zyklon b was used as a fumigant before it was used in the holocaust. It was also called Prussic acid and would be known as Hydrogen Cyanide today. It was discovered by Carl Scheele back in the 1700s. It is also what gives poisonous (bitter) almonds their characteristic scent and toxicity.
Haber did however, suggest the use of Chlorine gas as a chemical weapon which his wife was so horrified by that she committed suicide. Haber was also partially responsible for the development of the Born Haber cycle which is a theoretical tool used to estimate the thermodynamic stability of salts.
Haber is only listed here because ultimately billions would have starved to death without the Haber process. And regardless of his intentions and the other things he did, that particular invention arguably saved more lives than anyone else that has ever lived.
Thank you for providing context. I did not mean to blame (or make people think that) Haber for any deaths, he was a smart person that made a great impact on all of us. It isn’t his fault people think of other ways to use his work for death. It most have been hard on him to have his wife commit suicide over it though. That’s rough.
Haber did not develop the Haber process to produce fertillizer. He did it precisely because German access to saltpeter from South America had been cut off and that threatened to severely compromise the German capacity for war. This was not a case where Haber’s work was meant for benign peaceful purposes and misappropriated for use in war. It was used exactly the way he intended it to be. It just happened to also be useful for keeping half the planet from starving to death. His wife did not kill herself because his work was misused. She killed herself because it was used exactly how Haber wanted it to be. And he can’t advocate for the use of Chlorine as a chemical weapon and have clean hands by definition.
Which is why I said that the only reason he was mentioned is because the Haber process ultimately saved the lives of billions of people arguably outweighing the harm that process was developed to enable. Haber wasn’t a good guy by any stretch of the imagination but without the Haber process, we would have had famine and death on a scale never seen in all of human history on this planet.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I guess I got mixed up with the process name and his actual intended use.
Even the fertilizer thing is arguably bad. It’s allowed the population of the world to explode at an exponential rate and burn through resources even faster rather than be capped at a much more manageable level.
The alternative wasn’t a reasonable population, it was billions starving. The solution was, and still is, giving women better control over whether or not they have children.
Even more are going to starve when we run out of fossil fuels and can no longer sustain the agriculture required to feed the now massively inflated population. Not to mention all the other damage having so many more people is doing to the world that is also probably going to kill us even if we solve the resource problem.
John Snow
For finally convincing westerners that microbes exist. Which got the ball rolling on like, actual medicine.
That’s all.
He did, in fact, know something.
And it was quite important.
And killing the last of the dragons and stuff
Louis Pasteur?
I’m more a fan of Jonas Salk, Maurice Hilleman, Edward Jenner, Alexander Fleming
Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press.
I suspect that one is overrated, actually. He did one step in a long, gradual process. He gets credit mainly because it was big for Europe, who right at that moment in history invented proper seafaring and spread themselves and his name all over the place.
Considering Europe did conquer the world (yes, including China), I’d say that’s a pretty big deal…
I don’t think that was related to Gutenberg at all. Or, at the very least, they would have industrialised just a bit later without him. The initial wave was all about boats that allowed them to reach and enslave less advanced people.
But if you think the internet and social media as the continuation of that tradition - maybe that was a mistake after all. /s
Louis Pasteur
James Color and Samantha Colour respectively, they invented color in their respective regions, before then the world was in black and white. Similar to Sandy Loam, very little is known about their personal life, or even what they look like. Hell, even their first names are up in the air.
It’s really tragic that we don’t celebrate the history of the people of Color the way we could.
Dolly Parton
Lenin.
We’re out here in full force.
James Clerk Maxwell. If it uses electricity then it’s based on Maxwell’s equations.
He is not the one and only great physicist in history tho.
Maxwell was an important contributor to the formalization of electromagnetism, yes, but just as much recognition should be given to Faraday for discovering the bloody thing exists in the first place.
Bell Labs and the invention of the transistor.
It’s absolutely mind blowing how many innovations came from Bell Labs.
Nobody, I think this is an insane question.
So many different people had small impacts on humanity, most of it somewhat regional. Most of the heroes I could think of in Western countries will have had a very limited impact on Eastern history, and vice versa. Also, I am very sure nobody had only positive impact.
Another problem: not everybody will rate a certain impact equally as positive.
I’d suggest to remove focus and attention from god- or hero-like figures and shift it towards improvements won by community action.
Edgy.
How? I think it’s pretty accurate for OP to say it takes a team.
Dude it’s a fun question from the sorts of who is stronger Superman or Goku. But even outside of that - it’s hard to deny that some individuals had more impact on the course of our society than others.
Who ever started the whole enlightenment thing, with the idea that there is no god and we are responsible for our self.
You know, from what I’ve read about it, it wasn’t one specific person, and it seems highly likely there were others doing the same thing earlier, but they just couldn’t take root for whatever reason.
What do you mean? It’s always a specific person or a specific small group that comes up with ideas that are later popularized. Like you can pinpoint evolution theory to a small group of biologists with Darwin and Huxley at their forefront.
So as you might be aware, you’ve actually chosen an example with 2 simultaneous inventors. Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the same idea at the same time, actually sent Darwin a letter about it before anything was published, and was credited for it. To be fair, they had similar backgrounds, and like you say were a small group. However, there’s plenty of inventions of the same thing separated across lots of time and space. Writing was invented several times is fairly isolated civilisations, and Gaussian elimination bears a German man’s name, and was thought to be fairly new, but can be found in ancient Chinese works as well.
Who started the enlightenment? Voltaire is often on people’s lips, but if it wasn’t for the French revolution in his area just a few decades after his death, and which made him a sort of saint, he would have a much smaller profile. Meanwhile, if you go back further there’s someone advocating some enlightenment-ish idea recorded from probably every century. Famous names taper off towards the middle ages in Europe, but then so does the record in general, and Arabs like Avicenna or Al-Ma’ari pick up the slack.
But every time writing was invented it had to be invented by a specific dude or a small group of dudes. It did not just come to be out of thin air, someone had to invent it and someone had to popularize it. And so with enlightenment - someone (maybe we don’t even know her name) has to come up with an idea and others, whose names we know have to popularize it.
I get that you are saying that it might have been another person (or small group), sure - but in the end it has to be someone.
Okay, well, sure. Even if it’s inevitably someone, there is an individual or individuals that it turns out to be in the end. I think it would be a large group for the Enlightenment, even if you remove the forgotten advocates of it, but I guess that’s a nitpick. I’m a huge fan of it too, pretty much every other good thing has been a product of it.
On the subject of this way of viewing history, which came up in another place, yeah, it could be depressing, but it depends on how you look at it. Schopenhauer said we’re almost powerless and it’s awful, Nietzsche said we are and it’s great. They were often speaking in more cosmic terms, but I think it applies here. It’s also a lot less pressure, right? And, beyond that, I think it just fits the data really well.
I think it’s important to note that what I’m talking about is a bit like statistical mechanics in physics (small, unpredictable events adding up to a more predictable whole), and statistical mechanical systems are often complex or non-deterministic. I don’t think without heroes human society is actually much diminished; or are our moral responsibilities within it.
But without “heroes” who is doing the actual work? Like again: Darwin, Huxley and couple other dudes actually had to make observations, collect data, come up with an, at that time, absurd sounding idea and defend it against societal pressure. And you don’t think that they have influenced history and could be replaced by anyone else? I vehemently disagree that the data fits your perspective.
Sure, if Darwin had been hit by a horse-drawn bus, we’d still have evolution. And probably a YouTube short about “The sailor-naturalist who almost discovered evolution (but died)”. It would just be Wallace’s theory of natural selection. There you go, one data point.
I was going to bring up some less clear-cut examples, but I guess I should ask what your point is, because I feel like I’m missing something. I think Darwin was a cool guy, but I don’t think he was unexpected. Yeah, they did the work, but work is cheap, every peasant in history did work. Why should I care more about Darwin than the people who fed Darwin, and who were themselves (something like) inevitable?
Who ever started the whole enlightenment
Highly debatable, but one argument could be made for Sultan Mehmed II, which would be a fairly ironic person to give the award to.
Sultan Mehmed II
That’s the dude who fought Dracula? Didn’t know he was involved with enlightenment any sources to read up on it?
The argument is (though it’s certainly not a universally-agreed view) that the fall of Constantinople lead a lot of artists and scientists to flee from the city heading west, along with old texts. Which lead to an increased interest in their knowledge from the west, which is what triggered the Renaissance.
Mehmed II was the Sultan responsible for the invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire and the siege of Constantinople. Hence, he’s the guy responsible for it, under this model.
That is a funny perspective, I somehow like it.
The enlightenment is overrated. History is driven by contestst of groups not contests of ideas.
And people are often governed or motivated by ideas.
People are governed/motivated by self-interest.
As a counterpoint, may I submit: your own fucking username?
Be weird if they had made the first line of the Preface a counterpoint to the first line of Part 1
Which group contested your attention to this idea two months later?
Kaiser Chiefs
