Fiver-rah's Journal: More seriously

Enough of this personal statement stuff. Now I have a real question, of extraordinary seriousness. Imagine that we're going to remove one of two people from human history. Our choices are Newton or Gauss. Which one do you think we could most do without, and why?

Gauss

[FortKnox]

Honestly, if these genius didn't do what they did, eventually someone would have.

But, I'd go with Gauss. Gauss did wonders to the electro-magnetic study, but his important discoveries and studies are shadowed to what newton did to the study (and beginning) of physics.

Newton's laws are far more important than Gausses, and Gausian theories need newtons laws to be proven (I can't really see how some of guasses theories could even start without the fundamental theories of newton).

The comparison is something like "Which is more important: Einstein or Hawking". Without einstein how would hawking even start?

I agree

[Some Woman]

I think that when faced with a question like this, you should oust from history the more recent person. When we discover something new, chances are that it is based upon all of the knowledge that we have gathered so far. If a big chunk of that knowledge is missing, it might prevent further discoveries. So, you could remove Newton, but then Gauss wouldn't have a basis for his discoveries. Since Newton formed a primary basis for the study of classical physics, it would do less damage to remove Gauss and his later discoveries.

Re:Gauss

[Fiver-rah]

Okay. So let's ignore all of what Gauss did on electromagnetism, on the basis that he couldn't have done it without Newton. But Gauss also:

• Invented the method of least squares
• Discovered the normal distribution (aka bell curve), and its surprising applicability to everything everywhere
• Had enormous impact in the field of matrix algebra
• Proved the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
• Contributed to just about branch of mathematics which exists.

I honestly think that what Gauss did was farther reaching, broader, and more magnificent than anything Newton accomplished. On the other hand, Newton came first; it's the only reason there's any discussion possible on the subject (personal bias: I think Gauss is smarter). On the other other hand, there was Leibniz.

Re:Gauss

[Nyarly]

Gauss had one property which makes it difficult for me to disagree with FortKnox's assertion that Gauss' contributions would have been discovered anyway. Gauss was mathematical prodigy. He was doing his father's accounting when he four - on a par with some of his contemporaries in music. And so, I suspect, that his various discoveries would have been produced by several other people.

I suspect that the bias comes from a mathematicians skew - Liebnitz might have discovered Calculus for us if we didn't have Newton, but who would have proposed a theory of gravity? Or set us on the path to understanding light? Or written the Principia? Even tossing out all contribution to base sciences, and considering only contributions to mathematics, engendering a (large) field of math is kind of difficult to discount.

All in all, it seems to be something of a spurious question. Why not compare Newton to Liebnitz? Or Faraday and Tesla?

Re:Gauss

[Fiver-rah]

Gauss was mathematical prodigy

And you think that makes this easy to reproduce? Whoa. The only reason Newton got as far as he did physically is because he was one of the first to have the tools to do so. Without calculus, you can't even properly formulate Newton's laws. Conversely, the drive to formulate what was observed physically is what led to calculus in the first place.

Incidentally, Nyarly, I just read your journal entry on N degrees of separation and complexity. Comments there separately.

Re:Gauss

[Nyarly]

And you think that makes this easy to reproduce? Whoa.

I think I failed to communicate my contention that, while Guass was personally better at math than almost all other people (self included) that this doesn't suggest that we was a genius - my feeling about Guass was that he was very prolific, and did a lot of math work, which in his absence a dozen other, more mediocre, people might have done.

Newton on the other hand strikes me as having made intuitive leaps that were absolutely incredible, in addition to producing an amazingly large corpus.

IMHO. But that went without saying, right?

Incidentally, Nyarly, I just read your journal entry

I know. Slashdot messages are cool.

Re:Gauss

[Tet]

The only reason Newton got as far as he did physically is because he was one of the first to have the tools to do so. Without calculus, you can't even properly formulate Newton's laws.

True, and yet despite discovering calculus some 20 years earlier, Newton created the entire Principia without once referencing it, instead sticking to tried and trusted geometric methods. It's somewhat of a meaningless question, though. Both Netwon and Gauss were first class thinkers, and to try and claim one is "better" or that we're less able to live without their contributions isn't really valid. If either of them had not made their respective contributions, the world would be a very different place now. That said, I'm now going to contradict myself completely, and Newton get's my vote :-) If push comes to shove, an understanding of Newtonian mechanics is IMHO more important than an understanding of electromagnetism.