MC: and the best ones, like Einstein, come up with ways of
looking at milennium-year-old problems from an entirely new viewpoint
I had a similar reaction to Andy's posting that he was
disappointed in Einstein. True, Einstein had the Lorenz equations
to work from, expressing the relationship between mass and
speed-of-light. Yet Einstein's insight was something we can all
admire.
My personal favorite is Archimedes. Without using zero, but using
Greek letters instead, Archimedes developed a system of
scientific notation. Less famously, Archimedes built the first
planetarium and the first ocean liner sized vessel (a gigantic
ship designed to bring the grain harvest from Egypt).
Which is just to get to this point. Anyone can criticize, blame,
and find fault. It's more rare and more important to be able to
praise. It's so hard to do new things, and it's so easy to be
discouraged. Sometimes it seems like the natural course of
society is toward discouragement, so those attainments and
examples that pull away from discouragement are all the more to
be treasured.
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