Delight Springs

Monday, February 20, 2023

Most important human ever?

"…Aristotle may in fact be the single most important human being ever to have lived simply because of the scope of his influence and the impact that he's had on culture ever since. He invents the discipline of biology and lays the foundation for the natural sciences. He effectively invents the social sciences, invents formal logic, invents literary criticism. You couldn't imagine a modern university without Aristotle. And if you start to think of all of the things that those subjects have made possible in terms of the development of vaccines and computing—which is dependent upon formal logical systems—the stretch of his impact has just been huge. 

There are probably only a handful of people who have impacted the lives of millions of people over centuries, if not millennia. I can't think of anyone who has made a larger impact than Aristotle. But to anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, I'd simply ask: Who's your stronger candidate?"

Aristotle (and the Stoics): An Interview with John Sellars
https://quillette.com/2023/02/19/aristotle-and-the-stoics/

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