Who can mankind have not lived without?

[sexdrugsmoney]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
Read Alfred Bester's short Story "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" for a rejoinder to this idea.

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Is this title available online?

[housenuts]

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I'd have to say that the wheel wasn't created but rather discovered just like fire was.

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alright, well if the men who "discovered" said items didn't exist, we'd be hooped

Im amazed no-one responded to the casual inclusion of Jesus in your example list! (unless I missed it)

We could quite easily have lived without a terrorist who created a popular cult. Most benefits to society that people would attribute to Jesus were due to Roman society.
(Any claim of Jesus improving earth's morality status cannot be humoured)

I would say that all Jesus caused were wars and conflict. Explosions of religion no doubt retarded scientific thinking.

Maybe a new thread could be started, listing people we could have really done without?

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I would say that all Jesus caused were wars and conflict.

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What war did he cause? And don't tell me any his followers caused, because I don't believe (if he existed and said most of what is attributed to him) that he ever encouraged war-like behavior. And the people disposed to starting wars in his name would probably find a suitable excuse to start wars should he never have lived.

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I'd have to say that the wheel wasn't created but rather discovered just like fire was.

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Why do you have to say that?

I vote for the guys who invented the internet. If it wasn't for them, all us idiots couldn't get together and discuss important questions like "Who can mankind have not lived without?"

We'd all have to get lives. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[RJT]

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I vote for the guys who invented the internet. If it wasn't for them, all us idiots couldn't get together and discuss important questions like "Who can mankind have not lived without?"

We'd all have to get lives. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Isn't that the truth? I think this is one post most of us, if not all would agree wtih. Bravo.

And many thanks to the gang who invented the internet.

[Trantor]

It seems there are only 2 possible answers to the question you posed, ie
"Who can mankind have not lived without?"

(well maybe 3 or 4!)

A} Adam/Eve (or other primary creation of the God of the religion of choice)

B) The offspring of the parents of the forebearer of some unknown years ago who made the evolutionary cut of natural selection and from whom mankind eventually emerged.


Other people of modern times may have changed how we lived but mankind would have lived without them, nonetheless.

My vote is for B, by the way.

[benkahuna]

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I vote for the guys who invented the internet. If it wasn't for them, all us idiots couldn't get together and discuss important questions like "Who can mankind have not lived without?"

We'd all have to get lives. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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You mean Al Gore? Yeah, things would be very different had he not lost in 2000. :P

(Al Gore was quoted out of context, btw--he just said he was more legislatively involved with creating the internet than anyone else, which is true)


As for Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace came up with evolutionary theory concurrently and Darwin gave him joint credit for the idea.


As for the whole thing? I think you need the original humans from Africa, but after that it's far too complex an issue to seriously address. We don't have sociologically deterministic math like in the Foundation trilogy. It's so hard to disentangle individual human achievements from their supporting network of other humans and other temporal environmental conditions as to make this question unanswerable by me (if I'm being honest) and at the same time pointless.

It's also a staggering list. So many individuals have contributed such important ideas upon which further ideas were built in addition to had so much political influence that this list might include milllions of individuals (in part because so many people were important when the earth's population was lower and the influence of earlier peoples would influence later peoples in chaotic and exponential ways). My list would include every Nobel Prize winner and every viable candidate for starters.

[sexdrugsmoney]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
Read Alfred Bester's short Story "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" for a rejoinder to this idea.

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I followed your advice and read this today, really enjoyed it.

Do scientists believe the (following text in white so as not to spoil it) <font color="white">individual continuim theory? </font>