Great Thinkers

Who are they? Who have they been in the past? Who had an original thought and why was it important?

Comments

[Zen]

Thinking is overrated.

But if I must answer...

If we're all buddha then all of us are great thinkers! Except for Rumsfeld. He's just a dolt. Mu.

[Non-Prophet]

I've always been impressed by the work of Einstein. Alfred was really something. ;)

[c]

Søren Kierkegaard

Oh, and Ozzy.

[Zen]

Thoreau, Muir, Emerson, Abbey, Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma, the Unabomber (the manifesto, not the bombs)

Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, Bohr, Copernicus, Aristotle, Plato, my mom, my dad, you.

[wob]

Stephen Hawking. Galileo.

[wob]

Thomas Hobbes

[pete]

Susan B. Anthony, Marie Curie, Grace Hopper

[pete]

Zen's mom.

[dr. evil]

hans bethe, neils bohr, and robert oppenheimer- the realized the political significance of the science they were working on,and if the politicians had agreed with them, the cold war could have been averted

[Non-Prophet]

Jello Biafra
D. Boone
Curt Kirkwood

[Non-Prophet]

Dan & Dawn.

[wob]

I think I just spit water all over my monitor when I read the Dan and Dawn part. :)

[Nate]

David Hume (I'm a fan of most thinkers of the Enlightenment) for various reasons, but my favorite has to do with his ideas regarding the compatibility of Determinism vs. Free Will. He argued (more eloquently than I can paraphrase his idea) that if your actions are not determined by events that happened earlier (as the result of experiences in your life which have formed your character and personal preferences), then your actions are completely random. How can someone be responsible for a random act? Hume argued that Free Will somehow then, requires Determinism because to be able to freely choose something requires a connection between preference and action. I've always found this an interesting proposition since at face value the two concepts of Determinism and Free Will seem mutually exclusive.

[suesun]

PAST- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, with Susan B. Anthony, convened the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Between the two of them they walked the whole eastern US talking to people. Elizabeth had a family at the same time, which makes her more amazing in my book.
PRESENT - Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who are bringing atheism into its rightful place and dispelling the myths of monotheistic religion with powerful prose.

[suesun]

and Stephen Colbert, who has taken satire to a whole new level.

[Zen]

...at face value the two concepts of Determinism and Free Will seem mutually exclusive.

"Infinite large is infinite small. There is no thing between 1 and 2."

- Neo (not that one)

I think James Dobson is a great thinker. He just thinks about the wrong things. :0)

[HamOnCan]

hi all. . . and yes, I consider myself a great thinker, Oh dear, talk about the typical response. .who the heck, do they think they are.
hey, brilliant cause we's stupid and stupid cause we's brilliant.. . let us get on, with the who we are and where we come from. . .
where most are looking . . and from the sounds of it, Daniel Pinchbeck. . .hey, I just a watch him talk about the Quiet shall return. Which is how I read the tittle of the book.
sounds like he's onto somes' good . . me? I come at life from being a jigsaw puzzle freak, well as any else they figure they could stretch me brains with.. . like is we gonna stump her with that. . Heck even Trump don't stump us and the Gump, talk 'bout sitting on the edge, as the story of my familiar. . though kNOw, not with people, safe for sharing a smile with Walt Disney once, as he walked through the hall in the hotel I happen work at the time.

more than any, it is happenings. . the kind which has the US ARMY . . . wake me up, while sleeping in me Chevy Van, with me Mom no less, at having visited me daughter and waiting for the ferry overnight, found a spot. . . woke up, mid a blaze of lights, and was told I was and "International Security Thread" and hey, ya can go check it out with me mom, who at 90 boasted, she can still climb over the railing . . we'll be taking pictures this spring. you can be sure.
me? am jsut a wonder, if I's this while I's sleeping, and this on an outpost in my own country, or rather, the country which has accepted me as one at one, with earth . . . . and having dug neath all the layers of consciousness spreading like blankits round the face of earth in a universe, every galaxy speaks of the computer of a certain concept, such as the FUNction of a cell. Have heard it 500 for a leaf, or a cell of a liver. . . at which I think, heck, them's only the once's they can see and or measure. . what of the mind behind the all that is.

is there one which runs the heads of all the people on earth, the way we think our brains has us run, like a charm for the most part. . or is the brain just transistor radio video combo . . I guess eye am a pupil of the black holes in space them on your face for giving you depth of purrception with the string theory principle flowing round reflexting where the impact of any give has you suffer widening of the arteries. . . ask, how little can I live well on. Know, the night the lights went out all over north east America you could just feel the atmosphere relax. . unplugged, off the grid, a moment in time we were reminded of present which was ours in our youth. . you've known nothing other than being hot wired and driv to the point any which comes tax us, is costing us our health. in no uncertain terms. . obvious the cost of doing business . . . has us committing suicide upon the face of earth. . . ah, a near death experience is an eye opener if nothing else is, a huge learning experience. . . just remember, Nature will doctor us back to health, the more we walk in peace, turn the sod and plant a blooming show. . hey, you'd figure all them good christians expecting the return of their Lord, Master and Heavenly Host, Glad me no think so, for I'd be shame faced show, of how we much good. . .
well at least the angrees have been drove out in the open to where they can be dealt with. . not by fighting, be it for or against, rather, by treating each with the music we can make. . . where ever so much as a hint of trouble brew. . . By the way, today is 33 years for me, since first life began educate me from the insight out. It comes to mind, at my remembering hearing Mother Theresa wished Sept 10 2001 be a world without hunger day. . 33 years to the day she opened her clinic in Calcutta, and that was the age, Jesus was crucified at. Next day. . well next day . . you'd have thought 9 11 would have cured us from wanting cause anymore violence because we do not honour the dead by learning how to fight
we honour them by playing music . . five music, is the universal language . . . and since it all a matter of vibration. . . hey, in my book of life all disEase is a product of a colossal loss of music in our lives. . .
Plant a tree, like the Maples arming earth with a shady deal well as stand on guard for us. . in honour of nature's abundance and playfulness,
wingnuts, whirlybirds and flutterbyes, at their literally being the cat's meow.
and that, according to Doctor Bernie (Siegel) makes for the best religion in the world. . .
cheers

[Zen]

Good god .... were you high when you wrote that?

Maybe I need to be high to decipher it.

[Nate]

I think the terrorists are using NP's blog to pass coded messages. I am forwarding this entire thread to the CIA.