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Who are you favorite intellectuals?

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ruveyn
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01 Feb 2009, 7:20 am

blackelk wrote:
What thinkers have influenced you? Who do you like?

My all time favorite is Carl Jung.


My top classical philosopher is Socrates whose "mission from God" was to be a pain in the ass and smoke out people who pretended to know but really didn't. He had the infernal gall to consider himself a "midwife of ideas" help other to bring out ideas and (sometimes) get them right. He made a lot of enemies among the Athenian middle class "big shots".

More recent philosophers I admire are Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Karl Popper and when I am running a low grade fever, Ludwig Wittgenstein. For very technical philosophy of science C.S. Peirce, Mario Bunge, and Abner Shimony.

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arielhawksquill
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01 Feb 2009, 11:17 am

Thomas Jefferson, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Buckminster Fuller, Joseph Campbell.

My favorite living intellectual is Simon Schama--I've watched all of his BBC history programs. He's like the heir of James Burke (whom I also love.) I've also been enjoying reading Paul Krugman's blog, which I discovered shortly before he won the Nobel Prize in Economics.



blackelk
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01 Feb 2009, 8:30 pm

arielhawksquill wrote:
Thomas Jefferson, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Buckminster Fuller, Joseph Campbell.

My favorite living intellectual is Simon Schama--I've watched all of his BBC history programs. He's like the heir of James Burke (whom I also love.) I've also been enjoying reading Paul Krugman's blog, which I discovered shortly before he won the Nobel Prize in Economics.


I can't stand Paul Krugman. He basically works for the Democratic party and his Nobel Prize was totally political.

But Joseph Campbell is great. Love him. Pure wisdom. Probably my favorite after Jung. Campbell was influenced by Jung more than anybody else btw.



Awesomelyglorious
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01 Feb 2009, 8:38 pm

blackelk wrote:
I can't stand Paul Krugman. He basically works for the Democratic party and his Nobel Prize was totally political.

Yeah, a number of economists I have read have claimed that Krugman's writings have become closer to political polemics than economics a while ago.



JetLag
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01 Feb 2009, 9:08 pm

Sir Isaac Newton.


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Chibi_Neko
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01 Feb 2009, 9:49 pm

I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.


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Orwell
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01 Feb 2009, 10:16 pm

Chibi_Neko wrote:
I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.

I like a lot of the interesting ideas he's come up with in evolutionary biology, but I feel that recently he's just been wasting his time and talent on vitriolic hatred towards Christians. He could make so many more great contributions to science if he would just go about his research instead of wasting all his time arguing with people.


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blackelk
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01 Feb 2009, 10:36 pm

Chibi_Neko wrote:
I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.


Richard Dawkins is a dogmatic fool. He has contributed nothing to evolutionary theory. He is a pop scientist who bring other peoples ideas to the masses. He is a seller of books first, and a thinker about 5th. The only way he can be measured as a great scientist is by book sales. lol at memes. You call that great thought? Dawkins is not an intellectual.



Last edited by blackelk on 01 Feb 2009, 10:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

blackelk
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01 Feb 2009, 10:37 pm

Orwell wrote:
Chibi_Neko wrote:
I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.

I like a lot of the interesting ideas he's come up with in evolutionary biology, but I feel that recently he's just been wasting his time and talent on vitriolic hatred towards Christians. He could make so many more great contributions to science if he would just go about his research instead of wasting all his time arguing with people.


He hasnt come up with any unique ideas of biology. And has added nothing to evolutionary theory.



Orwell
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01 Feb 2009, 11:04 pm

blackelk wrote:
Orwell wrote:
Chibi_Neko wrote:
I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.

I like a lot of the interesting ideas he's come up with in evolutionary biology, but I feel that recently he's just been wasting his time and talent on vitriolic hatred towards Christians. He could make so many more great contributions to science if he would just go about his research instead of wasting all his time arguing with people.


He hasnt come up with any unique ideas of biology. And has added nothing to evolutionary theory.

Wasn't Dawkins the one who came up with the whole "selfish gene" hypothesis? If not, there's some major undue credit he's been getting.


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blackelk
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01 Feb 2009, 11:22 pm

Orwell wrote:
blackelk wrote:
Orwell wrote:
Chibi_Neko wrote:
I really like Richard Dawkins, he's really smart.

I like a lot of the interesting ideas he's come up with in evolutionary biology, but I feel that recently he's just been wasting his time and talent on vitriolic hatred towards Christians. He could make so many more great contributions to science if he would just go about his research instead of wasting all his time arguing with people.


He hasnt come up with any unique ideas of biology. And has added nothing to evolutionary theory.

Wasn't Dawkins the one who came up with the whole "selfish gene" hypothesis? If not, there's some major undue credit he's been getting.


The selfish gene is a pop metaphor that Dawkins used to sell books. It is gene centered evolution. It is a pop metaphor for gene centered evolution; which Dawkins HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH. Look up gene centered evolution. It was only POPULARIZED by Dawkins. He just attached to a clumsy and inaccurate metaphor to it to sell books. He couldnt sell a ton of books on "gene centered evolution", but he could with the "selfish gene". He is a writer more than he is a scientist. Dawkins is a historian, not a history maker. An art teacher, not an artist. He is a secretary that sells other people's ideas. He actually doesnt claim these ideas as his own. He's not that stupid. But most of his fans just assume he came up with this s**t and he is some revolutionary scientist. When he has actually added nothing to the science himself.



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02 Feb 2009, 12:01 am

Interesting. OK, it makes sense that he's more a writer than a researcher, but in order to get a doctorate degree and get tenure at Oxford he has to have done some research. Maybe not ground-breaking stuff, but he can't just be purely a writer and get a PhD.


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02 Feb 2009, 12:11 am

Orwell wrote:
but he can't just be purely a writer and get a PhD.

If you have a billion dollars, it's possible...



blackelk
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02 Feb 2009, 12:14 am

Orwell wrote:
Interesting. OK, it makes sense that he's more a writer than a researcher, but in order to get a doctorate degree and get tenure at Oxford he has to have done some research. Maybe not ground-breaking stuff, but he can't just be purely a writer and get a PhD.


I just wanted to make clear that he isnt important in his field. Unless you go by book sales. Just compare him to somebody like Noam Chomsky for example. I dont really like Chomsky, not his politics anyway, but he has contributed as much to linguistics as anybody in history. One Chomsky is worth one thousand Dawkins. A few pages of Chomsky's critique on Skinner's Verbal Behavior suprasses Dawkins' entire life work. It is people like Chomsky who we rely on for progress. Not Dawkins.



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02 Feb 2009, 1:09 am

Biggest influences:
Plato, Zhuang Zi, Descartes, Nietzsche.


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02 Feb 2009, 2:11 am

I hate Nietzche, I'll go with the almight Thomas Hobbes. For some reason he has NEVER enjoyed widespread popularity; most likely because he was pretty right about everything except squaring the cirlce and cubing the sphere. Most people DETEST truth; the prefer to embrace either what they want to believe or what beliefs will gain them social approval.