Posted on 01/26/2015 8:10:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Who was the smartest person to ever live? There are certainly many worthy contenders. Today, the very name of "Einstein" is synonymous with genius. Others may suggest Stephen Hawking. Those who appreciate literature and music may proffer William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven. Historians may recommend Benjamin Franklin.
Before I submit my own suggestion, we must first discuss what we even mean by smart. Colloquially, we routinely interchange the words smart and intelligent, but they are not necessarily the same thing. There is an ongoing debate among psychologists, neuroscientists, and artificial intelligence experts on what intelligence actually is, but for our purposes here, a simple dictionary definition will suffice: "capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc."
Implicit in this definition of intelligence is general knowledge. An intelligent person capable of understanding quantum mechanics is useless to society if he is completely ignorant. So, a truly smart person will know a lot of things, preferably about many different topics. He should be a polymath, in other words.
Finally, there is the element of creativity. Creative people think in ways in which most other people do not. Where society sees a dead end, a creative person sees an opportunity.
Which person from history was the bodily manifestation of intelligence, knowledge, and creativity? Our blog's namesake, Isaac Newton, of course!
What was Newton's IQ? It's impossible to say. IQ tests didn't exist in the 17th Century, and if they had, Mr. Newton certainly would not have deigned to spend 90 minutes filling out ovals on a multiple choice test. Besides, he likely would have finished the test early and then spent the remaining time correcting errors and devising more difficult questions.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
Been trying to come up with the best 20 books for a person to read that deal with politics, economy, history or about America or society at large in the world and having a tough time as there are too much books. So I am concurrently putting every book I like into a listmania list at Amazon. I had hoped to maybe do a vanity with the 20 best books here, but it is taxing to do.
I can only imagine how hard it is to pick one person as being the smartest. Too much work.
And his silver hammer.
LOL
No, not Jesus. He blew one out of twelve.
He allowed it to happen as he talked about it to the twelve and they had no clue what he was talking about it. But he knew all along
I don’t know...um, Swedenborg? Alls I know is I’m the dumist.
I was talking about Niels Bohr, not Max Born. Bohr got the Nobel Prize for establishing the founding principles of atomic structure and quantum theory. It would take Born another 30+ years to get his Nobel Prize for quantum mechanics.
He was probably the hungriest.
The problem with the question is that you need to define smart.
RE: The problem with the question is that you need to define smart.
The author anticipates this question and defines it after the second paragraph of the article.
RE: No, not Jesus. He blew one out of twelve.
I don’t think He did. He KNEW it was going to happen and it happened according to His knowledge.
No.
Wisdom and intelligence is not the same thing.
Which is obviously why the answer to the question is not me.
I skimmed down the article and missed that part.
Bah!
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