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HUMANS

Top 10 Geniuses of 10 Fields of Human

Activity
FLAMEHORSE MARCH 24, 2010

Check out our new companion site: http://knowledgenuts.com

[Competition: This list contains a competition, see the first comment for details.] This is
another list of human endeavors but it covers ten of the most important aspects of
human life through all history it is not specifically modern, or ancient. While most will
agree with the selections, there may be some dispute if so, be sure to tell us in the
comments. I have chosen one book for each item on the list for further reading this is
also connected to the competition running on the list.

10

Politics
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus

Runners-up: Alfred the Great, Suarez (theoretical), Benjamin Franklin, George

Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln.
He is, in this listers opinion, one of the very few decent leaders in history. He had his
personal vices, among them that he was a womanizer who used his power to seduce
any woman who took his fancy. Theres a Clinton joke in there somewhere.
But Augustus can be forgiven that sort of thing given that he was never a tyrant, never
let his absolute power corrupt him absolutely, and worked tirelessly for some 42 years
to make Rome the finest city in the world.
It may already have been the finest, but Augustus managed to make it even better.
Consider that he seized power after Rome had been in continual war with itself for 200
years. The city was ripping itself apart by 27 BC, had just gone through the worst of its
civil warring: the First Triumvirate, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus; then the Second,
Octavian (Augustus), Marc Antony, and Lepidus, and no one knew who was in charge.
Not even the Senate had control. When Augustus proclaimed himself Emperor, all the
bickering stopped. He very quickly made everyone love him.
His rule cemented the Pax Romana, a time from c. 130 BC to c. 180 AD, during which the
Roman Republic/Empire was invincible, and no foreign power dared challenge it.
Augustus showed up in the middle of it, when, right after that Second Triumvirate and
civil war, the entire state was in danger of imminent collapse from within. Augustus
pulled it all back up and held it together. He instituted Romes first official fire fighting

force of between 500 to 1,000 men in 14 districts throughout the city. He instituted the
first official police force, and now, without having to fight the foreigners, he was able to
establish a standing army for Rome, c. 170,000 well trained soldiers. He repaired, then
greatly advanced the technology of the roads throughout Italy.
He abolished private tax farming, and turned it into a civil service, bringing food to the
masses more cheaply, instituted the first official census, the flat-rate tax, with each
provinces citizens paying an established annual tax.
None of this mentions all the magnificent buildings he had constructed.
He brought all state finances under control, since the civil wars had caused the values of
most things to fluctuate violently. He donated 170 million sesterces (an enormous
amount) to establish a trust fund for the active a retired soldiers throughout the
empire. This made the soldiers love him more than anyone, and a coup impossible. But
then, even the citizens loved him. The senators. Almost everyone loved him. He proved
Machiavellis maxim that the best ruler is the one who rules by love, and slightly inferior
to him is the one who rules by fear. The worst ruler is the one whose people hate him,
and there have been plenty of the latter two.
He may have been the greatest benevolent dictator the world has ever seen.
Further Reading: Augustus: The Life of Romes First Emperor

Applied Mechanics (Inventing)

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Runners-up: Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison.

No introduction is necessary. Suffice to say the man invented the precursor to the robot
(and the actual, artificially intelligent robot hasnt been invented yet). Da Vincis idea was
for a small cart powered by a very strong spring. The whole thing was made of wood on
the outside, with steel framework, and he used several of these, all the same size and
shape, to roll around the inside of his house serving drinks and food to guests. The carts
turned at the proper doorways by means of various wood disks that da Vinci placed
inside. Each disk had different holes that struck the teeth of different cogs and gears on
the inside, and thus turned the cart at different times, in different directions. The drinks
and food were placed on the flat tops. Replicas have been made based on his extremely
detailed drawings and notes, and they really do work.
He invented the first successful parachute, made of a balsa wood frame, and silk fabric,
shaped like a hollow pyramid. He never had the nerve to try it out, though. No one did,
until 2000, when a skydiver named Adrian Nicholas tested it, and it worked. Nicholas
died 5 years later when his modern parachute didnt open.
Da Vinci invented the sniper scope for rifle arms (muskets in his day), which was simply
one of his smaller telescopes bolted onto the top of a musket. He invented pivoting
scissors, all earlier designs being single flexing pieces of metal using spring action. The
spring design had the drawback of bending out of shape if squeezed too hard, and no
longer flexing properly. The pivoting scissors operate as two pieces of metal around a

bolt. Da Vincis design has changed very little. He invented the first successful hang
glider, based on the operations of birds wings, for which Bernoulli was not alive to come
up with a principle until 200 years later.
He invented the tank, made of thick oak and powered by four to six men turning iron
wheels via an iron crank shaft, while four other men inside loaded and fired cannon at
the enemy foot soldiers. There is no record of the tank being used in battle, but had it
been, it would have been impregnable against the arrows, axes, and swords of the day.
It could have been set on fire, but it would have terrified anyone who saw it long before
they worked up the nerve to approach it. It was the equivalent of the tripods in H. G.
Wellss The War of the Worlds.
He almost invented the helicopter. He just needed a sufficient engine to hold it in the
air, and the combustion engine was a long time coming. He invented the steam cannon,
which was almost as powerful, and much faster and cheaper to reload, than the
gunpowder cannon. He modernized hydraulic pumps, and invented the stabilized
artillery projectile. We know it as a rocket, which has stabilizing fins, as opposed to a
cannon ball or simple conical shaped projectile. He invented thousands of other things.
Further Reading: How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day

Sculpting
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Runners-up: Bernini, Donatello.

Da Vinci was a master of just about everything of the day, including sculpting, but when
it came to sculpting, he deferred to the young upstart Michelangelo. The story goes that
a 13-foot high block of marble was excised from the Carrara quarry, about 60 miles up
into the Appennine Mountains from Florence, and transported there to be carved into
some Old Testament figure. Agostino, the student of Donatello, was commissioned for
the work, but after roughing out the legs, and knocking a hole between them, he gave
up. Donatello died, and the block sat weathering away in the rain, outside a Florence
cathedral. The Operai, who were the old men who commissioned artists to sculpt
marble blocks into works worth posting around the city, pleaded with da Vinci to do
something with the block, before it eroded to dust, since marble was very expensive to
cut and move. Da Vinci refused, complaining that the stone was now full of cracks, and
much shorter from erosion than when Agostino had intended to make it into a statue.
Whatever figure chosen would thus be too short.
He then suggested that they give it to the young Michelangelo, who had shown himself,
with his Pieta, to be good at sculpting. He was 26 years old, took the much-needed
money, and 4 years later, he had made David.
His other most famous sculpture, the Pieta, is a depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the
body of her dead Son, who has just been crucified. He produced many other sculptures,
painted occasionally, and also designed the dome of St. Peters Basilica.
Further Reading: The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo

Rhetoric
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Runners-up: Quintilian, Thucydides, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Sir Winston

Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every high school or college Latin student is familiar with the structure of a Ciceronian
sentence. He almost always wrote in what we call a periodic sentence. The main verb is
at or very near the end, no matter how long, and Ciceros sentences are frequently VERY
long. The subject is at or very near the beginning. Everything in the middle is a
dependent clause modifying the subject or the main verb, or a modifier of a modifier.
The sentence can go on ad infinitum. When translating, especially into English, it is often
impossible to leave the main verb at the end, because the ear demands it more and
more, until the subject is forgotten.
But anyone today who pursues a college degree in rhetoric, no matter his or her
language, Ciceros sentences are sure to be required reading. Political science majors,
and especially lawyers, are trained to compose sentences like this. Not trained well
enough anymore, granted, since there seems to be a bit of a drop off from Abraham
Lincolns speeches to George W. Bushs speeches. If you ever find yourself wishing the
speaker sounded more intelligent, you should invoke the name of Cicero above all
others.
He mastered the techniques of his day, which were passed down from Ancient Greek,
most notably Thucydidess Funeral Oration of Pericles. It is impossible to know whether
Pericles himself actually composed the speech in the form in which Thucydides records
it, or Thucydides actually composed some or most of it in his own style. It is very
complicated Greek, but very rewarding to the rhetoric student, as Cicero showed amply
in his famous Catilinarian Orations, a series of speeches made in the Roman Senate to

denounce and vilify Lucius Catilina, a corrupt senator who tried to overthrow the Roman
Republic. Cicero actually succeeded in ousting Catilina from power, ultimately resulting
in Catilinas death in a rebellion. Cicero did this solely by means of his prose mastery.
Here is an excerpt, from his First Catlinarian Oration:
Just how long, O Catiline, do you intend to abuse our patience? How long is that
madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of this unbridled
audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the night guards set on the
Palatine Hill do not the watches posted throughout the citydoes not the alarm of
the people, and the union of all good men does not the precaution taken of
assembling the senate in this most defensible place do not the looks and
countenances of this venerable body here present, have any effect on you? Do you not
feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already
stopped and made powerless by the knowledge which every one here possesses of it?
What is there that you did last night, what the night before where is it that you were
who was there that you summoned to meet you what design was there which
was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
Further Reading: Cicero: The Life and Times of Romes Greatest Politician

Geometry
Archimedes

Runners-up: Euclid, Rene Descartes.

Archimedes is typically in the top four of historys mathematicians, but it was his
practical applications of geometry that will make his name last forever. He invented the
Armichedes Screw, which is still an efficient means of carrying water from a low place to
a high place quickly. Its simply an inclined plane inside a tube. One end of the tube is
set in the water, and the tube is leaned against something. Turn the tube and the water
rises on the inclined plane to the other end and out. He told his employer, the king of
Syracuse, Make me a screw long enough and Ill empty the ocean.
The king of Syracuse, which was a walled city on the shore of Sicily, employed him to
make the city safe from siege, and he did this by drawing up plans for various machines,
notably a huge ballista that could fire 1,000 arrows at once through small slits in the
walls. It could devastate an entire regiment approaching the walls. He designed larger
and larger catapults to hurl larger and larger stones farther. His most famous
inventions, all based on geometry, are his Claw and Heat Ray. The claw was a device
he envisioned to swing out from the top of a wall, into the side of a wooden ship
attacking the harbor. The claw would puncture the ship, then men would hoist it up by
means of a huge lever, and overturn the ship, or even upend it, and sink it in a matter of
minutes. He told his king, You give me a lever long enough and Ill move the earth.
The Heat Ray was simply a line of soldiers with highly polished shields angled to catch
the sunlight and direct it to an enemy ship in the harbor. One shields reflection of the
sunlight was insufficient to cause wood to burn, but 100 of them magnified the suns
heat 100 times into a small spot, and did indeed, cause the ships to reach their
flashpoints, bursting into flames where they floated.
He mastered the geometric mechanics of the simple machines. He roped up a system of
about 50 pulleys of various sizes, some as small as a hand, some as large as an SUV tire,
then tied one end of the rope to one of the kings galleys, a huge ship, and wrapped the
other end in his hands, and proceeded to pull the entire ship out of the harbor onto the
ground by himself. The pulleys lessened the weight.
He discovered hydraulics when he got into his bath one night and the water overflowed
the tub. He saw that the amount of water displaced equaled his weight and ran
screaming naked through the streets, Eureka! Eureka! which means, I have found it!
I have found it! This discovery enabled him to measure the volume and density of an
irregular object, such as the kings crown, by submerging it in water, and measuring the
amount displaced.
The story of his death goes that he was so engrossed in his geometrical experiments
and drawings that while the siege of Syracuse was going on, a Roman soldier shouted to
him to freeze in the street. He was carrying an armload of his gadgets and looked like a
looter. He ignored the soldier, and the soldier stabbed him to death. His last words are

said to have been, Dont disturb my diagrams. He had been drawing them in the dirt.
Marcellus, the Roman general, gave strict orders that he was to be spared, because he
respected himso much. He lamented during the siege, I have 10,000 men. They have
Archimedes.
Further Reading: Archimedes and the Door of Science

Modern Physics
Albert Einstein

Runners-up: Christiaan Huyghens, #2 on this list, Max Planck, Niels Bohr.

Einstein has become a byword for genius. He, along with Archimedes, is one of the four
greatest mathematicians of all time. He revolutionized physics in all its fields, from
nuclear physics to quantum physics, to thermodynamics, and of course, relativity. He
discovered that when you deal with something as gigantic as the Universe, strange
things are going to happen with time itself. He theorized that time and space are
themselves inseparable, and act together as a sort of fabric, that stretches and distorts
the same way that a piece of cloth does when stretched tight and objects are placed on
it. The heavier the object, the deeper the impression. It works the same with gravity and
the void of space. Time itself slow down when passing through any gravitational field.
Usually the difference is negligible, but this is a serious matter when concerning black
holes. Time itself stops when entering a black hole.
To his contemporaries, Einstein sounded like he was off his rocker. Not only was he

rewriting the established physics of the last 300 years, he was actually predicting
specific events based solely on the equations he scribbled out on paper. His physics
stated that light itself bends when encountering gravity, and this was something the
scientific world could and intended to prove. An upcoming solar eclipse on November 7,
1919, would be the perfect chance. And Einstein was right. The light from a star bent
noticeably as it passed around the edge of the suns coronal disk during the eclipse.
This remains one of the very rare times when physics has predicted anything specific
and measurable, and more astoundingly, when that prediction was proven correct.
Einstein worked on everything in the realm of physics, including a Unified Field Theory,
which is a theory of everything. It would explain, most importantly, the interaction of the
four forces of the Universe at the moment of the Big Bang, and even before that
moment, thus before time itself was begun. Scientists still havent cracked the theory,
but Einstein is the man who has gotten us closer to the solution than anyone.
Further Reading: Einstein: His Life and Universe

Literature
William Shakespeare

Runners-up: Homer, Dante Alighieri, Cervantes

Very few people can claim universal mastery throughout the world in one discipline.
Literature isnt even one discipline. Poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction, literature is
comprised of many subcategories that each have their masters, and these masteries do
not frequently overlap. Shakespeare, however, is almost universally acknowledged as
the absolute master of drama, dramatic poetry, sonnets, fiction, and dramatic nonfiction. He has been translated into more languages than any other writer of anything in
history (unless you count God as a writer). Everyone wants to see the master at work, to
see how he does it. What makes Shakespeare so great?
His works have an overriding tone of cynicism. He always deals with human foibles, and
his works give the audience the sense that humans are, beneath it all, really pathetic.
There are no flawless heroes in his works, because there are none in life, as he saw it.
There are plenty of villains. His tragedies always end with all or almost all of the main
characters dead by one anothers hand. They always fall apart from within, brought
down by human weaknesses. His comedies are actually a lot of the same, except that in
the end, all or almost all of the main characters get married. His comedies have been
called the first modern sitcoms, in which the characters hurl lighthearted insults at

each other.
And no matter how well you frame the plot in your next short story or novel, no matter
how bizarre, how unique, you make your characters, Shakespeare did it before you. He
might not have been the first to do anything, but he modernized drama more than any
other writer. And thats not to mention the philosophy inherent in his sonnets, which
are, besides the content, the premiere closed-form poetry canon in English. His works
are quoted, performed, and parodied more often than those of any other writer, and this
is especially impressive given that theyre 450 years old. His two most powerful
tragedies, Hamlet and King Lear, are more than just drama and poetry. Theyre in-depth,
psychological analyses of the minds of those suffering mental and emotional anguish,
and how they cope with it.
Further Reading: Shakespeare: The Biography

Philosophy
Aristotle

Runners-up: Socrates, Plato

Even today, after such great minds as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hume,
Descartes, et al., all modern philosophy is founded on the principles and methods of
Aristotle. He learned from Plato, who learned from Socrates, the three greats of the
ancient world, but Aristotles legacy is that he constructed theories on everything from
biology to ethics, logic, politics, poetry and physics. He was the first to distinguish
aquatic mammals, such as whales and dolphins, from fish. He was the first to describe
the hectocotyl arm of the cephalopod. There many kinds of cephalopods, namely the
octopus and squid, but also many species that live in shells. Most of them have a
hectocotyl arm, which is a combination tentacle and penis, housing the spermatophores,
and inserted into the female then broken off. The male grows a new one about every
season. It was not rediscovered until the 1800s, and it was tracked down by biologists
reading Aristotles description of it. They couldnt believe that he was right about what
it does.
He practically invented the scientific method, which has hardly changed at all
throughout the last 2,300 years.
Aristotle was the first to systematize logic into a formal study, and Kant noted his work
as the core of all deductive reasoning. If you have ever deduced anything, and you have,

you have used a method Aristotle was the first to formalize. On the subject of ethics, he
argued quite reasonably that the human being should work to make itself happy, since
in so doing it would fulfill natures goal in creating it. And the highest form of happiness,
he argued, was to learn, since that is what humans do most naturally. In so learning,
humans will inevitably become the best that nature has intended of them, wise and
good.
He argued that the intent of any political system should be to provide the best possible
well-being for the public. In his opinion, there were 3 basic kinds of political systems: a
constitutional government, an aristocracy, and a kingdom or empire. Because of the
nature of humans to devolve in everything, these three forms would pervert into a
democracy, an oligarchy, and a tyranny, respectively. Thus, he argued, the constitutional
government is the best choice, and the one every political state should choose. Modern
democracies have progressed very little beyond Aristotles vision of what one should be.
Further Reading: Aristotle for Everybody

Mathematics
Sir Isaac Newton

Runners-up: #6 on this list, Carl Friedrich Gauss, #5 on this list.

If humankind ever sets foot on another planet with a species of comparable or superior
intelligence, we will do so not in the name of God, or peace, but in the name of Isaac
Newton. He discovered and methodized classical mechanics, with which the world
worked on almost all scientific problems for the next 300 years, until Einstein finally
modernized his theories and laws. He invented the reflecting telescope, which uses
mirrors instead of lenses. He also invented the modern concept of the car, except for the
engine. His design, which he made for fun when he was about 13, had a wood chassis,
four wood wheels on two axles, all connected to the steering shaft. The steering wheel
was a solid wood disk that turned all four wheels, enabling the car to travel sideways as
well as forward and backward. The car was powered by a very strong spring that
unwound over the course of an hour, enabling him to drive from his mothers country
home into nearby Woolsthorpe and Colsterworth, two small villages. It traveled about 10
mph.
His contributions to the fields of physics, mathematics, science, and even theology are
beyond belief. Mathematicians today call him Superman. During 18 months, 1665-6,
he asked himself the question on every scientists mind at the time, What in the world

is holding the moon up in the sky? Why isnt it falling to Earth right now? He used all
the mathematics of the day to address this problem, discovering the generalized
binomial theorem in the process. Then the mathematics no longer made any sense with
the material he was working with. So he effectively invented differential and integral
calculus to keep on the trail of the solution. In the end, he succeeded, and discovered
the law of universal gravitation, and the 3 universal laws of motion, also known as
Newtons Laws. All this at the age of 23. Modern mathematicians still regard it as
superhuman.
First Law: An object in motion will stay in motion, unless an outside force acts upon it.
Second Law: A body will accelerate with acceleration proportional to the force and
inversely proportional to the mass.
Third Law: Every action has a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
These 3 laws laid the groundwork for all physics until Einstein, whose relativity theories
allow for more fine-tuned, microscopic examinations. Newton also postulated a theory
of colors, stating that objects do not possess color of themselves, but are acted upon by
the colors innate in light, which can be separated and integrated with a prism. This is
how he came up with the idea for the reflecting telescope. Gottfried Leibniz also
discovered the differential and integral calculus about the same time, independently,
and gave it its name, whereas Newton called it the method of fluxions and fluents. It
can be said that Leibiz discovered infinitesimal calculus, but just to satisfy his curiosity
of what it could do; Newton invented it, for the express purpose of solving a problem he
was working on.
Newton distinctly advanced every single branch of mathematics in use today.
Further Reading: Isaac Newton

Music
Johann Sebastian Bach

Runners-up: Palestrina, Renaissance Music; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Classical

music; Ludwig van Beethoven, Romantic music.
This lister wrote another list, solely of composers, which Bach crowned. He is not
intended to crown this one. The ten field of this list are independent and unranked with
regard to importance.
Bach is one of only two people who managed to perfect an entire system of liberal arts.

His system was Baroque music, which began long before he was born. By the time he
reached his creative pinnacle, Baroque was going out of style because most of his
contemporaries considered it to have been exhausted.
Bach proved them wrong, even if they did not admit it. History has borne him out as the
perfecter of the Baroque style of music. He did not invent any new forms, whereas
Franz Joseph Haydn virtually invented the modern symphony. But Bach wrote absolute
masterpieces in every form of his day: fugue, sonata, cantata, concerto grosso, mass,
sinfonia (the precursor to the symphony), etc.
He was the first to devise a system for tuning any keyboard instrument, especially the
harpsichord, and its variants. His Well-Tempered Clavier is two books of 24 preludes
and fugues each, in all the major and minor scales, and he intended one of these to be
played before a performance, in order to tune the keyboard. By using music, the ear is
able to discern harmonics and thus a context of each tone, without which, the performer
may tighten a string until it pops.
No one before or since has been able to compose contrapuntal music (two or more
melodies harmonizing with one another) so frequently, so monumentally, with such
grandeur, complexity, richness, and technical brilliance as Bach composed. He could
improvise fugues for 2 hours at a stretch at the organ. He would sometime write them
down afterward from memory.
He understood contrapuntal music as intimately, as naturally, as Newton understood
mathematics, or Aristotle understood logic.
Further Reading: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician

Theology
St Thomas Aquinas

Bonus

Runners-up: St Augustine, St Albert Magnus (St Thomas teacher)

Theology is the study of God through divine revelation (as opposed to metaphysics
which is the study of God according to natural reason). St Thomas Aquinas was a
Dominican priest in the 13th century who was, ironically, called The Dumb Ox. But
during the course of his career as a teacher it became increasingly clear that he was
anything BUT a dumb ox. St Thomas was the first man to successfully unite faith and
reason using Aristotle as a starting point (as opposed to some like the Muslim scholar
Averroes who failed in his attempt and came up with a theology that gave a twofold

truth one for matters of faith, and another for matters of philosophy; St Thomas
combined the two completely without contradiction).
St Thomas most famous theological work is the Summa Theologica a five volume set
of questions and answers on all matters of faith. Based strongly on the principles of
Aristotle and formal logic, the summa is a water-tight exposition of everything you
could want to know about the world beyond this. Some of the subjects dealt with are
whether animals have souls, the manner in which the bodily resurrection of the dead
will take place, and a variety of topics relating to justice (whether lying is a sin, etc).
The impact St Thomas had on the world was far greater than any theologian before him.
He became known as the Angelic Doctor a far cry from the dumb ox and his
writings were all but canonized with virtually all Popes after his time requiring that St
Thomas writings be the foundation of seminary study for all priests this is still the
case today in all Catholic seminaries in obedience to Rome.
Further Reading: Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox

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