Genius - what does that really mean?

[steelyglint]

So I'd maybe rate Newton, Galileo, perhaps Leonardo de Vinci, Tesla, Blumlien, Fuller, Babbage etc but not Erasmus. He was just a popular philosopher. The only "contribution" he made was to advance Christian Humanism.

Newton, Galileo, Tesla, etc. were all 'spotlight' guys; their illumination of a subject was just that - one subject. It may have been a wide subject, but it was a single field of study. Going only from what I've read of Erasmus, which wasn't exactly exhaustive, it is more than possible that he wasn't all that he was made out to be - as Venusian Broon said, it may just have been people saying nice things because they liked him.

I chose Leonardo da Vinci as the one I would hazard cash money on because he was at least a 'lighthouse' type in that, as you mentioned, he dipped into a number of different fields. There is enough distance between architecture, engineering and painting - Milan Cathedral, Mona Lisa and a helicopter and parachute are evidence of a multi-talented inventiveness, and both the building and the painting are viewed by experts in those fields as 'masterpieces of genius'. I'm sure, had the fuel, materials and the materials science been available, the 15th century could well have been astounded by a flying contraption over Florence. Haven't even mentioned his anatomical studies, another subject unrelated to the others. From him backwards in time its a good 1,739 years to the next candidate, Archimedes. He was a bit restricted by his time, but still managed to point his beam successfully, products of his mind still being in use today, in several distinct directions.

Imagine what a Leonardo or Archimedes could do having, and being familiar with, the ultra-high tech tools and materials available today. Not to mention the science behind it, and the step-by-step record of how the current peaks of knowledge were arrived at. Lots of letters and SF dreams would be next to arrive - AI, FTL, Fusion, Arcology, Terraforming, Nanotech, Magic Bullet, etc. Who knows, maybe a proper system of planet-management, everybody with a roof and dinner; fewer weapons, and all of the biggest ones in orbit pointing out - if we ever stop killing each other there might be something that's been watching us, like a 'World of Sport' series, and decides to take up where we left off.

Then, maybe we don't need those blokes. After all, us ordinary humans usually win when Hollywood tells the tale. But we do need Jeff Goldblum to work out which lead has the right plug to fit a port in an alien mothership.

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