THE GREATEST THINKERS

1. Alternative Approaches

MOSES ?13th century BC: Moses acted  as the loudspeaker  who broadcast God's  will as a  tight set of  laws that established  a people and  a religion.  His contribution  was very much  more than that  of a passive  communication channel for  he had to  weld the detail of the  law and the  lives of the  people together.  Moreover  he had to  do it in  a way that  would survive his personal authority.

CONFUCIUS 551-479 BC: The Christian  approach encourages man  to be virtuous  and right within himself.  From this it is expected to follow the that his  relationships with other  people will also  be right.  Confucius  put all the emphasis on the relationship itself.  This relationship would be proper if each party carried out its assigned role.  If the relationship was correct it did not matter if each party was a scoundrel or not.

PLATO c.428-348 BC: The ordinary  man sits in  his limited cave  and sees only  the shadow of  reality.  The philosopher  turns round and looking out of  the cave sees  the truth itself.   Plato insisted that the truth existed as true forms or absolute ideas below the surface appearance of things.  He set philosophy on an eternal course searching for the underlying truth.

2. Special Universes

ARISTOTLE 3384-322 BC: Before Aristotle  words were simply  a means of communication.  Words and concepts followed each other in the flow of language or thinking.   Aristotle classified and  categorized concepts in  order to extract  their full meaning and from this their relationship  to each other.  He went on to devise the syllogism which is a device for relating categories to each other and so extracting hidden logical truths.

EUCLID, c.300 BC: Euclid has  been the envy  of all thinkers.  From a few basic axioms he built up a great structure by the use of pure deduction.  As each theorem arose it provided the basis for still further theorems until it seemed that everything could be explained by  deduction from basic  exioms.  Euclid was,  however, working in  a restricted universe  of intersecting lines in two dimensional space.

JESUS, 6 BC-AD 30: Jesus offered  an alternative universe.   Instead of the  hierarchical universe of  privilege and gain  in which  men struggled  onto each others' shoulders in order to approach nearer to God, he offerd the Kingdom of God in which all men were equal.  In  this universe there was place for the sinners as well as the saints, for the meek and humble as well as the righteous.

3. Thinking Backwards

AUGUSTINE, 354-430: Augustine introduced  the concept of  predestination.  He thought  that all men  were predestined to  damnation.   No amount of  effort on their  part could alter  this destiny.  Only  a gratuitous outpouring  of grace by God could save a man's soul.  This  grace was not  earned or deserved.  But a man could open his soul to grace and rise with it to fulfil God's will and so achieve salvation.

AQUINAS, c. 1225-1274: Before Aquinas  it seemed that  Christianity was bound to separate man's thinking into two distinct compartments.  In one compartment there  would be reason  and philosophy and  in the other  there would be  religion and belief.   Aquinas reunited the compartments  as natural theology in which reason and logic could live alongside belief and revelation.  He achieved this by repackaging Aristotle.

COLUMBUS, c. 1451-1506: An example of how a strong idea could lead reason and action.  Columbus did not discover America by accident but by a careful study  of all the evidence and a determination to try things out.  He set out to reach the lndies since he could not know America  stood in the way.  With the same equipment anyone could have set out on a similar task but no one else showed his determined thinking.

4. Breakaway

MACHIAVELLI, 1469-1527: The idealist  moves ahead hoping  that things will  turn out as  he wishes.  He  nods at good  fortune and copes with difficulties but feels that the true course of events should be even.  Machiavelli's realist responded to things as they were instead of  wishing them to  be as they should.  His realist was an opportunist who extracted the maximum from good fortune and even tried to turn misfortune to advantage.

COPERNICUS, 1473-1543: Copernicus insisted  on that most fundamental of truths:that the earth was not the centre of the universe.  He showed that instead of  the sun moving  around the earth, it was the earth that moved around the sun.  The idea itself had been suggested before but it was Copernicus who set off the revolution in thinking that was to follow.

LUTHER, 1483-1546: The Church  had always insisted that it was man's travel agent for the journey to salvation.  If man was to ascend to God, then the immense structure of the Church was necessary for the ascent.  Luther maintained that man should carry his own ladder to  salvation.  Man could  communicate directly and  on a personal level with God without the intervention of the Church.

5. Knowledge and Method

BACON,1561-1626: Following Plato  traditional philosophers had  felt that truth  resided in the mind of man and would shine forward to explain the surrounding  world.  Thinking had  to come first  and observation followed  to confirm the  thinking.  Bacon insisted that truth only came from careful observation of nature.  Truth flowed into man's mind and not out of it.  Thus he came to be regarded as the father of the scientific method.

DESCARTES, 1596-1650: Descartes' success  in inventing analytical  geometry convinced him  that even the most complicated situations can be broken down into  simple parts that  are combined in a special way.  By the power of thinking he sought the simple parts that went to make up man's thinking and his destiny.  He hoped to do by analysis what Euclid had done by construction.

NEWTON, 1642-1727: Before  Newton  circular  motion  was  circular  motion.   Newton  showed  that  circular  motion  consisted  of  two components:motion in a  straight line at  a tangent to the circle and motion directed inwards towards the very centre of the circle.  The  latter was gravity.   His concept of  gravity and his mathematical treatment of it were to explain the mysteries of the orbits of the planets and the motion of the earth.

6. Feats of Attention

ROUSSEAU, 1712-1778: Rousseau tried to draw attention to the real feeling man that was somewhere under the hard shell of social appearance which man  had forced himself to wear.  He drew attention to man's feelings and vulnerability, to the needs of his soul. He railed against  the artifice of  both art and  science and all  the disguises which  man wore in order to satisfy the expectations of society.

KANT, 1724-1804: The rationalists  felt that truth  emerged in the  mind and was  then seen to  be reflected in the world around.  The empiricists took the  opposite view and felt that truth dwelt in the world around but could be observed and extracted by the mind.  Kant  suggested that the  mind already held  fixed ways of  looking at things and that the observed world was fitted into these fixed ways.

MALTHUS, 1766-1834: Malthus focused  attention on something  that became obvious  once someone had  stated it.  He  showed that  if  food production increased in  an arithmetic fashion  (straight line) and  population increased in a geometric fashion (upward curving line) the  widening gap between  the two could  only be filled  by misery.  He saw nothing in nature which would halt the geometric growth of population.

7. Process and Value

CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831: Clausewitz was  concerned with practical operations rather than metaphysical analyses.  He was concerned specifically with the practical  operation of war.   For him war and politics were not distinct : war was only politics carried on by different means.  His  interest in strategy,  tactics and operations makes him the father of management science.  He was interested in action not in essence.

DARWIN, 1809-1882: With his  theory of evolution  through survival of the fittest Darwin provided a plausible explanation for the origin of different species.   It was only  a theory with no proof.  But as a theory it offered an escape from the necessity of having God create  each individual species.  The theory was eagerly adopted by those who felt that science would in time oust God as the explanation of nature.

MARX, 1818-1883: Marx felt that with the introduction of machinery in the industrial revolution labour was producing a value above its immediate needs.   This surplus value  was going to  make the capitalists richer.  In his scheme of things labour was to enjoy the full  value of its  efforts, setting enough  aside for capital  investment.  Labour and capital were to change places.

8. Demystification

CLERK MAXWELL, 1831-1879: Before Clerk  Maxwell people could study the efffects of light, electricity and magnetism but had no idea as to their nature.  By the  applied power of  his thinking he  deduced that they were all electromagnetic waves obeying exactly the same laws but  of different wave  length.  He even  went on to  explain the behaviour  of types  of  radiation  (X-rays, radio-waves) which had not then been discovered.

WILLIAM JAMES, 1842-1910: Ever since  Plato the pursuit  of absolute truth  had led philosophers on metaphysical excursions.  William James cut across these semantic  indulgences and declared  that truth was  determined by the  usefulness of a  statement:  by  the difference  that would be  made in practical  terms if the  statement was true  or false.  In  the place of the semantic analysis he put pragmatism.

NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900: For centuries man had looked to God to provide him with the road along which he was to travel through life.  Religion had provided  the values that  were to govern  men's lives.  Nietzsche found these values meek and submissive.  Supermen were to arise  who would restore  man's moral fibre  and by exercise  of will and intellect determine the path he was to follow.  God was dead.

9. Foundation Concepts

PAVLOV, 1849-1936: Pavlov showed  that inputs into  the mind could  be directly related  to outputs by  means of the conditioned reflex. This direct linkage  did away with  the need for  mysterious psychic phenomena.   If the mind  of man was no more than a complex switching system  for connecting up  inputs and outputs  then human behaviour  could be controlled and predicted without the exercise of free will.

FREUD, 1856-1939: Man had  prided himself on  the objectivity of  his conscious mind.   This was the  supreme tool with  which he would observe and understand  everything else.  Freud  suggested that the conscious mind far from being objective was involved in repressing and  disguising the wishes of the more powerful subconscious mind.  The conflicts of the subconscious mind could be seen to explain much of human behaviour.

EINSTEIN, 1879-1955: Einstein shattered the traditional concepts of space, time, energy and matter.  He showed that instead of moving with Newtonism motion  through a neutral  space, objects moved  throught a space-time continuum which could itself be curved. The implications of his theories led directly to the development of nuclear energy.

10. Coping with Complexity

KEYNES, 1883-1946: It was  inevitable that in  time economics would  become as important  as politics, religion  or scinece.  Keynes was especially concerned with  the economics of recession and unemployment.  Conventional wisdom suggested a cutting back in wages and spending  during a recession.  Keynes turned this upside down and insisted on increased government spending to give people more purchasing power.

WEINER, 1894-1964: Weiner intorduced  the basic concept  of cybernetics in  which control of  a system is obtained by feedback from some point in the  system.  The perceived error in the aim of a gun feeds back to correct the aim.  The concept is central to the understanding of complex dynamic systems and as such is probably the key concept to our understanding of society and nature.

SARTRE, 1905-1985: As the  most public exponent  of existentialism Sartre turned his back on the traditional concern with the essence of man and destiny and he proclaimed that man should face immediate and total reality accepting its meaninglessness instead of trying forever  to analyze it.   Man only existed  as man when  he was conscious of his rebellion against the tide of circumstance.

    *Edward de Bono, The Greatest Thinkers, London:European Music Limited.1976.