Concerned Girl wrote:
Seriously! Think about all the kids that struggled in your intro to calculus class learning calculus out of a book, and then think that Newton didn't learn calculus - he sat down and MADE IT UP (or discovered it, depending on your philosophical views)!
Actually Newton an another guy created calculus at the same time independently.
malmo wrote:
Concerned Girl wrote:Seriously! Think about all the kids that struggled in your intro to calculus class learning calculus out of a book, and then think that Newton didn't learn calculus - he sat down and MADE IT UP (or discovered it, depending on your philosophical views)!
Actually Newton an another guy created calculus at the same time independently.
So? That doesn't run counter to Concerned Girl's post.
I didn't say it did run counter to concerned girl's post. What your point?
science lover wrote:i mean how many scientists today do you think could've have come up with calculus all on their own, or pulled the special and general theory of relativity out of their imagination. it takes a special genius to do such things.
the theory of infinitesimals, when you look at it, isn't that difficult if you follow the methodology
it's somewhat surprising that someone else hadn't come up with it before, but the guys in those days were more interested in algebra & number theory & little in "calculus"
to me, tartaglia's solving of cubic equations in the 1500s is more impressive ( i still have difficulty following the exceptionally clever substitution method he uses )
as for einstein, he desrves credit more for publishing his theory just before hilbert ( greatest mathematician of the 20th century ) did - latter used a highly mathematical approach compared to einstein's more physics one
it also shocked me, that one of the big formulas of relativity is basically a derivation of lorentz's work
1 / ( 1 - v^2/c^2 )^0.5
which einstein improved upon
even with his
e = mc^2
there were guys prior to him who had already posted this formula in other contexts :
poincare talked about E/c^2 for mass density ( or E = mc^2, but he was talking about electromagnetic fields )
guys called abraham & hasenhorl also posted papers on the crucial c^2 aspect of the formula but had different multiplying factor
it's a bit shocking when the 2 mainstay formulas of einstein's work were already in the public domain but in different contexts compared to his
.. wrote:There is always room for another top guy and knowledge in fields like biology is incredibly shallow. Any genius would have no problem making an impact.
that is nonsense
i graduated low end of the cohort of 200 in my year
guy who graduated 1st was one of the smartest guys i've ever met in my life
he is now a professor of neurology but his main career research work seems of little use to general public - it's on aetiology/pathogenesis/etc of gliomas/astrocytomas - something which impacts on just a few patients/100,000
he shouda been doing blockbusting work on general causes/tratement of cancer or developing cure for HIV, etc, but he ended up doing research in his own field, which unfortunately for general public is of little use to them
for career choices, many of the smartest guys in biology/medicine are doing very niche work not the general public-impacting work
North America with the Olmecs and Mayas.
Yeah them too. Olmec, Mayan, Aztec, Indian, and Egyptian artifacts and texts describe broad nosed, nappy haired, black Africans as the originators of civilization. But realize Newton's Europe was 99.98% pre-Olmecs and pre-Mayans civilization. Newton's Europe had less than 1% educated, 10% aboriginal / barbarian tribalists, and 90% primitive cave and mudhut dwedllers. Europeans lived in filth, slept with their livestock and with their own smelly excrement and urine. They left dead human corpses and dead animal corpses rot in the living quarters next to preserved fish and meats. No running water. No semblance of civilization existed in Newton's Europe.
The smartest people are typically working on string theory (if they are not mathematicians) and not neurologists.
Way too abstract for medical doctors.
Leibniz.
malmo wrote:
Concerned Girl wrote:
Seriously! Think about all the kids that struggled in your intro to calculus class learning calculus out of a book, and then think that Newton didn't learn calculus - he sat down and MADE IT UP (or discovered it, depending on your philosophical views)!
Actually Newton an another guy created calculus at the same time independently.
So? That doesn't run counter to Concerned Girl's post.
malmo wrote:
I didn't say it did run counter to concerned girl's post. What your point?
Concerned Girl: Holy bejeezus he was smart
Malmo: Actually...
What exactly WAS your point if it was not as I inferred?
When someone makes a strong claim and someone else replies with "Actually..." it is pretty well understood that they are stating that the first claim is not really that impressive.
Is that too difficult for you to grasp?
What the heck wrote:
Concerned Girl: Holy bejeezus he was smart
Malmo: Actually...
What exactly WAS your point if it was not as I inferred?
When someone makes a strong claim and someone else replies with "Actually..." it is pretty well understood that they are stating that the first claim is not really that impressive.
Is that too difficult for you to grasp?
Someone is need of a time out.
The more knowledge we gain the less knowledge there is remaining???
Not if knowledge is infinite, which I believe it is.
There will always be more to discover or invent. The problem is that it is difficult for humans to get caught up and by that time a lot of their creative juices aren't flowing as well. Many of the geniuses of the past made discoveries before their 30s. The other difficulty is for the general population to understand what these discoveries mean. I think it will take 30-40 years for the discoveries of todays scientists to become relevant.
yyy wrote:The smartest people are typically working on string theory (if they are not mathematicians) and not neurologists.
Way too abstract for medical doctors.
you clearly have little clue about med school intake
the guy i was talking about was one of the top maths guys in the country from school qualification
he had no intention of "slumming it" on $100k/y as a prof of maths or physics when he coud get $500k/y for a prof in neurology
ventolin^3 wrote:
yyy wrote:The smartest people are typically working on string theory (if they are not mathematicians) and not neurologists.Way too abstract for medical doctors.
you clearly have little clue about med school intake
the guy i was talking about was one of the top maths guys in the country from school qualification
he had no intention of "slumming it" on $100k/y as a prof of maths or physics when he coud get $500k/y for a prof in neurology
So, he sold out.
They have already cloned dogs. Can you imagine if cloning humans gets perfected (which I think will be soon) and the next einstein or newton just happens to come along though we may have to wait a hundred years or more. We wouldn't have to really work anymore as we watch space newton and medical newton and engineering newton invent phasers and spaceships and the cure for cancer with all the tools and data of the modern world.
its going to happen wrote:
They have already cloned dogs. Can you imagine if cloning humans gets perfected (which I think will be soon) and the next einstein or newton just happens to come along though we may have to wait a hundred years or more. We wouldn't have to really work anymore as we watch space newton and medical newton and engineering newton invent phasers and spaceships and the cure for cancer with all the tools and data of the modern world.
It ain't all in the genes sonny boy. If a person doesn't want it, they ain't gonna do the work...regardless of their immense natural talent. Just look at all the running primadonnas who never went anywhere.
the rocket. wrote:The more knowledge we gain the less knowledge there is remaining???
yes
"useful knowledge" such as significant maths/physics/biology breakthrus which significantly impacts man
Not if knowledge is infinite, which I believe it is
there is likely a limit to "useful knowledge" ( as currently the laws of nature are "fixed" so you are chasing a static target )
let's make up figures ( grossly exaggerated for illustration ) :
in einstein's day, ~ c 1915, lets say 80% of useful knowledge in the universe has been found
that left only 20% to be found & by law of diminishing returns, it's much harder to find this remaining 20%
100y on from einstein, let's say we have got to 90%
by law of diminishing returns, to find another 5% to take it to 95% may take further 100y
the next 2.5% to take it to 97.5% may take another 200y
the next 1.25% to take it 98.75% may take another 500y
i hope you get the picture...
This depends on the field. Nowhere near 80% of "useful knowledge" about neuroscience was known in 1915. It could be argued that the field didn't really get started until the true genius, Santiago Ramón y Cajal started publishing around 1900.
ventolin^3 wrote:
the rocket. wrote:The more knowledge we gain the less knowledge there is remaining???yes
"useful knowledge" such as significant maths/physics/biology breakthrus which significantly impacts man
Not if knowledge is infinite, which I believe it is
there is likely a limit to "useful knowledge" ( as currently the laws of nature are "fixed" so you are chasing a static target )
let's make up figures ( grossly exaggerated for illustration ) :
in einstein's day, ~ c 1915, lets say 80% of useful knowledge in the universe has been found
that left only 20% to be found & by law of diminishing returns, it's much harder to find this remaining 20%
100y on from einstein, let's say we have got to 90%
by law of diminishing returns, to find another 5% to take it to 95% may take further 100y
the next 2.5% to take it to 97.5% may take another 200y
the next 1.25% to take it 98.75% may take another 500y
i hope you get the picture...
i'm sorry but a histologist with some new stains in a nascent field being the "true genius" is well overblown
try samson wright as a true genius - find his textbook - makes guyton look like kindergarden material
I won't argue over definitions of true genius but Cajal didn't invent just a few new stains. Not only was he the first to discern all of the basic fundamentals of neuronal architecture and synaptic connections but much of what he said wasn't confirmed until recently. For instance, he advocated that dendritic spines could move and were the fundamental site for where and how memories were encoded. At the time this was considered crazy. His incites, not his technique, was where his genius was.
Also I will say this. In general, geniuses are not known for their textbooks (ability to synthesize other people's material) but their incite (their own paradigm shifting discoveries/theories).
ventolin^3 wrote:
i'm sorry but a histologist with some new stains in a nascent field being the "true genius" is well overblown
try samson wright as a true genius - find his textbook - makes guyton look like kindergarden material