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Turing, Darwin or Einstein, which had the biggest impact?

Computers would have existed without Turing. They were well on the way and though his work was important, many others were working on similar ideas.

Einstein's work gave us some practical benefits that we use every day in semiconductors and etc. Some credit him with nuclear energy, but he explained rather than invented it. Atomic power would have happened without him, perhaps not so quickly, but the work begun by the Curies was being carried on.

Darwin's work was likewise essential in that much of what we know about the biological domain continues to be informed by it, and that effects medicines and ecology and agronomy in ways important to us, but the essential bits of his ideas on natural selection were already hit upon by another, and I feel that though the field might have taken off more slowly without his encyclopedic works on natural history, we would have gotten there by now.

So, for me it is between Darwin and Einstein from this list.

But were Gregor Mendel in the list, I would have to pick him.
 
As an organic chemist, I am partial to RB Woodward as the intellectual giant of science. I asked another chemist who knew him, and also did Nobel quality research, if we would ever see another like Woodward, he relied "No, he was a mutant."

I am aware of Turing; but not really knowledgeable. I suspect that, like Bert Einstein, what he proposed was based on a lot of logical and physical evidence. In the case of Bert, a few measurements strongly supported his theories. On the other hand, Darwin had to peer through the fog of uncertainty that attends all biological studies and work out a theory. Since biological observations are always poorly controlled, it required a lot of research to support his ideas.

I choose Darwin- he marshalled a lot of disparate, poorly-controlled observations to develop a hypothesis that is, now, one of the best-supported theories in science. The ideas of Einstein and Turing promoted technology, Charlie gave us profound understanding of life.

I may be wrong- dang, I hate philosophy.
 
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I'm not denying Newton's accomplishments were great. Just that

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He brought mankind from a belief system of magical influences
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isn't really true.
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That may have been a bit of an overstatement; however, he did revolutionize science by devising the first truly mathematically based scientific explanation of motion and astronomical observations (Kepler's law was devoid of a theory -- it was merely descriptive). Any by the way, he discovered calculus and revolutionized mathematics as a side issue. And I won't mention optics as another of his contributions. Whoops, I just did!
 
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Tubbythin said:
Really? AFAIA, the anomaly wasn't discovered till the mid 19th century. Even when that was discovered, most people thought the answer lay in a new, unobserved astronomical body. I'm not sure (and I could be wrong) anyone really thought Mercury's anomalous orbit was a sign of the breakdown of NG till Einstein came along.
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Indeed, if hoary old sci-fi writers are to be believed, some even suggested a name for this unobserved planet - Vulcan.

See http://geobeck.tripod.com/frontier/planet.htm for details . . . .
 
Perpetual Student said:
That may have been a bit of an overstatement; however, he did revolutionize science by devising the first truly mathematically based scientific explanation of motion and astronomical observations (Kepler's law was devoid of a theory -- it was merely descriptive). Any by the way, he discovered calculus and revolutionized mathematics as a side issue. And I won't mention optics as another of his contributions. Whoops, I just did!
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Agreed. Though Kepler did ditch the idea of celestial bodies having to move in circles, which had held the heliocentric model back for a very long time.
 
So far Darwin has had the most profound effect on our understanding of ourselves (assuming you are not ignorant).

Turing is catching up -- within a few decades I think his work will have an equally profound effect (again, assuming you are not ignorant).
 
cyborg said:
In what sense does Einstein being right about E=MC^2 mean that the disastrous social consequences of nuclear weapons haven't happened?
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Nah, his Theories of Relativity has led to Moral Relativism and the gays.
 
Obviously, Einstein, since there isn't a huge reservoir of people worldwide screaming about "Intellegent Relativity".

Turing? Not sure he's on the radar here.
 
BenBurch said:
Computers would have existed without Turing. They were well on the way and though his work was important, many others were working on similar ideas.
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I don't doubt that computers might not have existed without Turing, and we probably would have had evolution by nautral selection without Darwin as well. Anyways, Turing wasn't just interested in making a machine, or even a universal machine, he saw a solution to the problem of how the mind works. Computation made it possible for the idea of mental representation to be philosophically plausible, and a scientifically tractable problem. He is the Darwin of the Mind proposing that the mind is computation. He even went as far as to say that;

Turing believes that machines think.

Now we can bicker over whether machines really think or not and I think that line of thought leads to a blind alley. Studying the brain has much more promise to reveal how the mind works. But without the information processing model of the brain, neuroscience would just be hollow fact gathering.
 
To pick a favorite I would have to have consider to much. Instead I'll compare on a future coolness factor.

Say 500k years from now.

In retrospect, as far as all that will come from healing and genetics, how much would Darwin get credit for? Not much, I would think in terms of all that will be learned.

Einstein is a long shot. Do we get any of the extreme conditions his theories can describe within technological reach?

But I know one thing. I'll say thanks to Turing for my 1mm cube implant in my left eyeball that gives me a mindcontrolled HUD ;)
 
One could even propose Euclid. The axiomatic method is fundamental to the development of all mathenatics, which we all know is the language and structural basis of the physical sciences. "Euclid's Elements is the most successful and influential textbook ever written." ___Wikipedia

Still -- my sentiments go with Newton.
 
BenBurch said:
Computers would have existed without Turing. They were well on the way and though his work was important, many others were working on similar ideas.
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This is the point I was going to make, except I was going to make it for all three. In the end, it's true for pretty much every scientist who has ever lived. Einstein brought a lot of things together, but there's a reason that when you learn about relativity you speak of Maxwell's equations (which weren't even Maxwell's to start with), Lorentz transformations, Hamiltonians, Lagrangian mechanics and so on. Einstein got there first, but someone else would have if he hadn't, and probably not long after.

As for Darwin, he had even less of a breakthrough. Theories about evolution were springing up everywhere. Wallace is the most obvious name to bring up, but there were plenty of other people thinking about the same things. Darwin really brought things together and was first to get published in a widespread way, but the way he is often presented as discovering evolution all by himself and changing the world is really just silly. Evolution and natural selection were going to be investigated around that time, Darwin or no Darwin.

In the Science of Discworld books, Terry Pratchett and co-authors refer to this as "steam-engine time", although I think I've seen it refered to as an older idea and not original to them. Essentially, science and technology are cumulative processes. Once the groundwork has been laid for an idea, the resources are available for it and the need or interest is there, it's almost impossible for that idea not to come about. The "steam-engine time" example refers to the industrial revolution, which was not the result of any particular discovery, it was simply that all the factors making it both possible and desirable were there, so someone was bound to bring it about eventually.

It's the same for Einstein, Darwin, Turing and pretty much anyone else. It doesn't diminish their accomplishments, but I think it's important to realise that they were never lone geniuses with unique inspiration who gave us ideas no-one else could have and changed the world. They were simply people who were first to make public ideas whose time had come. And in Darwin's case arguably not even that. Yes, they were certainly fairly bright and didn't just state things that any random off the street could have, but there's no need to make them out as any more than they really were. The "shoulders of giants" quote is something everyone should remember except that in reality it's not giants, it's a human pyramid. The important difference being that there has to be someone at the top of the pyramid, and if it wasn't one of the people we know, it would have been someone else.
 
What Cuddles said.
Newton made the comment about standing on the shoulders of giants- and even that wasn't an original line!
They say a genius is someone who has two original thoughts in a lifetime.
Had Newton died of the plague would Robert Hooke be the father of universal gravitation?
He may have been less the genius than Newton, but he was far the better networker- and there were a lot of smart people around in London at the time.

There are other contenders for all three of the named scientists. Indeed I find myself wondering about all lone geniuses. Were any of them truly different, or did they all happen to be the tip of a wedge of intellect? Was there an Ionian equivalent of the Royal Society? Does discovery and invention in history come in bursts merely because of good communications in a particular area at a particular time? Colleges in Athens/ schools of artisans in Florence / mail and print linked philosophers in the reformation / grand tours in enlightenment Europe/ letter writing, newspaper reading Victorian imperial globe trotters / 20th century universities / 21st . interwebthingies?

I only ever met one man I considered a genius- not just smarter than me (a sadly common feature), but qualitatively more intelligent- an adult who soaked up new ideas at the rates of a toddler with no apparent limit. He comes from a mountain village in Kashmir and will probably never appear in any history book. What if he had lived in Boston or London and hung around on the 'net? Genius needs context.
 
Perpetual Student said:
One could even propose Euclid. The axiomatic method is fundamental to the development of all mathematics, which we all know is the language and structural basis of the physical sciences. "Euclid's Elements is the most successful and influential textbook ever written." ___Wikipedia

Still -- my sentiments go with Newton.
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After having read the posts discussing the inevitability of the various discoveries made, and as I think about this more, Euclid looms large. It's difficult to say how many centuries it might have taken for someone else to come up with the axiomatic method. It was not a discovery about the natural world; it was the invention of a profoundly productive way of thinking about, developing and analyzing mathematics, without which we would have no physical science as we know it. Perhaps Euclid had the greatest impact of all.
 
Of the three, I respect Darwin more, because I think he was driven by social responsibility rather than personal ambition moreso than the other two.

However my unrestricted pick for who's had the greater impact on daily life would be Tesla.
 
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