Smartest known man of all time

the man did literally everything

>>8560784
but only his novels and poetry are of any worth

>>8560774
Do you retards have to talk about blacks and women in all threads

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>>8560774
Goethe confirmed terrorist.

Goethe's theory of colors > Newton's
prove me wrong

>>8560784
What did he do other than write?

I want to say Rembrandt, but i don't know why.

The thing is, we was not only very smart in the logic sense, he was very artistic and creative as well. You don't see that very often.

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nah

JVN

socrates

Adolf Hitler desu, if you disagree you are cucks.

Praise kek

>>8560865
What is he holding there anyway? Is it a feather pen?

>>8560968
it's a blunt lmao

>>8560806
I can't, I can respect both sides of the argument.

swiss cyclist steve morabito

>>8560774
The actively used vocabulary in his writing covers 80.000 different words.

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>>8560801
>Goethe is the Leader of Isis

>>8561418
This is like fucking Escaflowne

>>8561010
Different languages though...

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Whats going on in here?

>>8563184
he was smart young and stayed very smart, but how's he the ultimate?

>>8563260
He solved philosophy TWICE.

>>8560809
have sex with boys

1

If you are going to choose multi-talents as your base for determining who was the smartest (I will read this as the most intelligent) person of all time, then I guess that Leonardo da Vinci is a better choice than Goethe.

>Leonardo’s drawings are some of the greatest and most famous of all time, while Goethe’s small lyrics and short poems are mostly read only in Germany: they loose a lot in translation, something that doesn’t happen, for example, with Shakespeare’s poems (who mostly maintain their magic even when translated, since they tend to concentrate their power much more in metaphors and imagery than in sounds).

>Leonardo’s bigger works, the paintings, are much more famous and were much more influential than Goethe’s bigger works, even his Faust. Again, the Faust is mostly read only in Germany, and, as drama and poetry, it cannot hold comparison with the great poetry of Shakespeare’s plays, or with Homer, or Dante. Leonardo, however, can seriously face the great painters of all time, even with his small body of work.

>Goethe’s scientific projects are not original and generally wrong. You can say the same about a lot of Leonardo’s work: his machines would not work in real life, they are mostly the work of imagination, and the same with Goethe’s theory of colors: such works can be viewed as art, but not as serious engineering and scientific achievements. However, Leonardo’s anatomical drawings were sublime, the best by far that humanity would see in hundreds of years. If they have been published during his lifetime they would be tremendously influential. They were even used as source for many of the great anatomical treatises of the XIX and XX centuries. Furthermore, Leonardo’s find fossils of oceanic creatures on top of mountains, and proposed that those areas were, in the distant past, all covered by the sea: that was a great perception, although Leonardo did not imagined anything like the movement of the tectonic plates.

>Leonardo was actually a good writer. His writings show a promising proto-writer, with something of the talents of Galileo: he has a limpid and clear prose, and constantly uses imagery drawn from the natural world (mostly similes). That means that he was also gifted in the verbal field.

>Leonardo was almost alone in his time and place when one things that he could actually perceive that most of the scholars of the time were mostly making philosophical questions that would lead one to nowhere, all those nebulous clouds of metaphysical dreams that could be sustained for years and years of talk with no actual result. He very early perceive that one will achieve much more by closely studding nature, the actual physical world, trying to deep always more profoundly on its details.

>>8563330

2

Now, that is one example of someone to dethrone Goethe if we think that multitasking is the gold-standard for intelligence. However, intelligence is a very elusive and complicated subject, and there is no clear consensus as what it really is. A simple example of the problems in these discussions is this one: is creativity to be considered part of intelligence or it is separated from it?

About Leonardo and Goethe: they tried their hands on many fields, but can we really say they were great on all those fields? To actually be capable of achieving great results one must demand a lot of time and effort, and time is limited for all human beings. Since neither Leonardo nor Goethe had all the time in the world in their hands, it is natural to see that many of the “fields on which they work” are only touched, only superficially plowed. It is one thing for scholars and admirers of those men to put under their wings several “realizations” in “different areas of human endeavor”, but it is another to actually consider these fingerprints as actual and durable realizations. If one really acts with cold logic is perfectly visible that Leonardo was mostly a draftsman and painter, and Goethe a writer. They might have tried their hands on other fields, but with no significant achievement.

If we are going to search for a multi-tasking person who actually made great achievements in slightly different fields, then Michelangelo is greater. He was a great sculptor, a great painter, a quite able smaller poet, and a quite able smaller architect.

>>8563334

3

Then there is other considerations. We can ask ourselves: what field of action is the one that demands more of human intelligence? Maybe the achievements of Newton and Einstein, of Gauss and Euler are extremely more demanding that the ones of any single artist.

And then we can also ask: what if a single artist was actually so great in his particular field that he outshines every other multi-talented person? Shakespeare’s poetic voice is awe-inspiring: he piles one memorable image upon another with almost unbelievable ease. He also created more characters than most other writers and worked with several different life philosophies and subject matters. Can we say with absolute certainty that he could not have had a more impressive brain than Goethe and Leonardo?

And finally:

>don't want to here shit about...but there could be an african boy in some village who was never known

It was probably a Chinese farmer in a village who was never known and did not have the chance to bloom.

>>8563267
gave me a good chortle

>>8560806
They were equally right (or equally wrong) in the end.

>>8560809
He made that song "Somebody That I Used To Know" with Kimbra.

>>8563330
>>8563334
>>8563344
ok thanks for replying, im really glad youre gettin it out and fillingg out our survey and we appreciate the feedback man

but check this out, i wont read about it or your exploits you monday to friday dubble bubble bitch hahaha, think i care? here i am talking about it against my will. i am powerful, one powerful man with temperance and acceptance to many different types of translucent diodes and pieces of shit like bulbs. its statistically impossible to kill me with any kind of blunt weapon but explain why 8 people have killed me with a mace? really makes you think

>>8563334
>>8563330
Leonardo was never a statesman. He didn't apply that much of his creativity in practice(pragmatic matters).

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lol

>>8560809
>revolutionize the German language (there's a reason why the Goethe Institut exists)
>was a politician of some sort, I forget exactly what he did but I think it was something like a senator
>did some work in science and mathematics
>wrote the greatest piece of literature in history

>>8564129
>>wrote the greatest piece of literature in history

Wow, slow down there. Even Goethe himself would admit that Shakespeare’s main tragedies and works like A Midsummer Night Dream, The Tempest and the Henry IV are superior in poetry and in characters than his own Faustus.

And I guess that if you would choose a single work of literature then The Divine Comedy, or The Iliad or the Odyssey and (and to me this would be the one) War and Peace all are greater than Faustus.

>>8564044

Is this some pasta?

>>8564129
>was a politician of some sort, I forget exactly what he did but I think it was something like a senator
He was Geheimrat, meaning he had a place on the city council, specifically in regards to infrastructure. He famously had a big road paved.

>>8564180
I genuinely believe his Faust is perfect. He was being very modest.
>>8564204
Close enough, I know nothing of German politics even now.

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>>8560774
Sorry, but no.

There are no people that can compete with this guy. Newton, Gauss, and the greatest of the Greeks are like roaches to him. We'll likely never get anyone like him for a very, very long time.

>>8564115
>gaub
smart

>>8560968
It's both

>>8563260
He gardened, did philosphy, and played the banjo

>>8564215
>I genuinely believe his Faust is perfect. He was being very modest.

Seconded.

>>8564216

fuck off, meme-fag

He's not even the smartest German. I'd have to put have to put him under Gauss and Leibniz.

>>8564261

Don't forget Schiller.

>>8564259
There's nothing "meme" about him. The greatest mathematicians of that time all agreed he was the best the world had ever seen.

>>8561010
Kollegah has a bigger vocabulary and he is not even the best german rapper

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If you disagree you obviously haven't read deeply and broadly.

>>8564277
Vocabulary is irrelevant.

Thesaurus rap is trash.

>>8564261

>Leibniz
>German

Fuck off like.

>>8564285
Yes that's what I wanted to say to the goethe has the biggest vocabulary anon. Goethe is still the best but vocabulary size is not necessarily a sign of literary greatness.

>>8564290

*Kike

>>8564271

There are several lists here, and in none of the Von Neumann is in the first place:

http://www.eoht.info/page/Greatest+mathematician+ever

There is also this one study (not the most viable, but still, it is one more list), and again, no Von Neumann:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment

Also, is curious how you find many Jewish scientists make great hipe comments about their other Jewish friends, almost as if they were defending their own category, like Judges and Medical Doctors do with their peers.

And again: Von Neumann was great in mathematics. He could not write like Shakespeare, no matter how much he tried, or paint and sculpt like Michelangelo.

>>8563260
>>8563184

Who is he?
t. pleb

>>8564296

>Le language games man

He's a famous Austrian meme kind of like Speed is for the Finn's.

>>8560865
This.

>>8564294
>Human Accomplishment index for physics
>places Einstein in 2nd

I don't even need to read the rest to realize this is absolute tripe. Fuck, I'm fuming.

>>8564281
He wouldn't even consider himself to be in the top 1000s

>>8564316
Modesty is a sign of intelligence.

I have a 144 composite IQ score tested with the WAIS, at age 19, and I'd consider myself as extremely modest.

>>8564215
>>8564224
Really? Why?
I didn't see anything special about it. It's not awful but there wasn't very much memorable, touching, or interesting about it, and it was marred by disunity.

Admittedly, it was translated, and I only could find The First Part of the Tragedy at the time- is The Second Part of the Tragedy that much better?

>>8564035
kek

>>8564330
If you have only read the first part, you haven't really read it.

>>8560801
>Go Ethel ISIS

what does it mean? who is Ethel?

>>8564330
it's that much different anyways

>>8564310

None of the other lists (look the first link, there are several sources there) put Von Neumann among the top five of all time.

He was very intelligent, no doubt about that, but there is a lot of hipe and myth thrown upon him, and maybe even some personally made by him.

But Einstein, for example, was not only more creative and influential than Von Neumann, but also a greater and wiser human being. But still, both are humans. I don’t know where this tendency to see Neumann as a god has erupted, by I suspect it came after the Wikipedia article on him was made (with that section about the personal gossips of other Jewish scientists and anecdotal evidences).

>>8564326
Well, he has interesting ideas and whatnot, but in terms of having produced something really extraordinary and meaningful (I don't see how else we could measure intelligence desu, it should be tangibly demonstrated) he's not the best candidate. I'm sure he'd agree.

>>8560774

"smart" is such a loaded term

Be more specific, what kind of smart?

I assume you mean smart as in capable of being proficient in many fields. A genius for sure, but a genius within the understanding and terms of a standard or above average human being.

However there are geniuses such as Newton, Einstein, or Tesla that are not fathomable to normal men. They weren't as proficient in as many fields, but the sheer mental power of those kinds of people is something that we can't really imagine without having that much genetic capacity for mathematical thoughts.

>>8564296
Wittgenstein

>>8560774

Shakespeare, Beethoven, Newton, Einstein, Gauss, Euler, Michelangelo.

>>8564129
>did science
not exactly this, he did not learn math and therefore could not argument on the normal Newton's axioms, his own theory of atoms goes back to the Ancient Greece, this is the downside of this actually really great, last universal genius

>>8564611
That's still science, and I am not using the modern sense of the word 'science'.

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>compile a list of the top 10, 50, 100 smartest people
>it'll be almost all white and all male every time

Why the fuck was I born a DOUBLE second-rate

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only possible answer reporting in

>>8560774
It's a running gag between my bf and me, how stupid Goethe was. We had to read shitloads of his works in school and studied some of his other (e.g. color theory) works in our free time and most of it is actually low quality or plain wrong (not even the right approaches, like Newton or Leibniz, or even the statistics-faking Mendel). Reading letters between Lachmann and J. Grimm, I've even noticed that Goethe's contemporaries didn't like how he craved for attention without actually achieving any real scientific insight.

>>8560809
>revolutionize the German language (there's a reason why the Goethe Institut exists)

Not even remotely if you read any works of his time or before. Just a regular author.

>>8564326
>modestly is a sign of social intelligence.
fixed
having a good gauge of your skills and abilities is real impt in the decision making process and even the meta decision making process.

>>8564290
>>8564293
How is Leibniz not a German?

Genius is so varied in its forms that it's really outrageous to try and compile a list that means anything.

How is one to compare Bach with Shakespeare, or Picasso with Martha Graham, or Alexander the Great with Wayne Gretzky?

>>8564801
You just did by placing them all in a "genius" category, however nebulous.

People like to put him because he was broadly focused but this >>8560796 anon might not be too far off the mark.

If you must go with a more universal genius try Aristotle or Leibniz

>>8560865
this too

>>8564281
>>8564316

>>8564367
>>8564739
neither of you understood the obvious sarcasm in >>8564326

That having been said, Sam Harris is no more intelligent than R. Dawkins or C. Hitchens from whom he steals most of his rhetoric. I enjoyed Waking Up, but he's extremely arrogant and pedantic, showcased most embarrassingly in Ham: Slices of a Life.

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The American Liebniz.

>>8560774
really gets your brainal neurons firing rapidly OP

>>8564129
>the greatest piece of literature in history
G*rman detected

>>8565240
this guy
literally changed the world forever in 20 years

What did Gauss even do?

>>8564882
How was Thomas Aquinas "smart"?

>>8565244
>arguably best logician of all time
>Successfully moved past Kant in a more meaningful than Hegel or anyone else
>Accurately described how meaning is made and functions
>Grounds science without falling into materialist or positivist traps
>Best theory of truth
>Dissolves all dualisms, allows hard Empiricism while preserving Universals

Ill agree with this one

>>8560865
Better than the Rationalists that followed, but still wrong about a good amount of logic.

>>8565251
I am a third generation Dutch immigrant and I've just recently started learning German (and at the moment I couldn't even be able to understand say, kindergarten-level German)

>>8565298
I agree that Pierce is probably the greatest american philosopher of all time, an absolute genius

but do you honestly think he is a better logician than Frege?

Wagner by a country mile

>>8565267
His ministry was about 2 years

>>8565304
Prove it, you fucking gaylord.

>>8565526
wat

>>8565288
Have you read anything he's written beyond the five proofs?

>>8565572

just give me a run down why you say he is smart?

>>8565658
His arguments are extremely clever and imaginative. There.

Just google 'aquinas, commentary on aristotle's [politics/ethics/metaphysics/physics]' and read a few paragraphs with Aristotle's text.

>>8565678

but isn't Aquinas just a watered down Aristotle?

>>8565696
fuk off

>>8565755
you fuck off mate

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>ctrl+f "plato"
>0 results

>>8564204
>He was Geheimrat, meaning he had a place on the city council,
Wrong. That means he was a minister of the duchy of Weimar, that was a sovereign state. City council my ass.

>>8564330

If you don't think Faust is "interesting" then you're simply stupid. Sorry.

You're memed and you don't understand the work. That's really all it comes down to. This isn't debatable. Faust is the Iliad of modernity. You don't understand the times you live in if you walked away from Faust and all you could think was "it was marred by disunity" lol.

Gauss or Newton

>>8564044
On a scale of man-to-God, how high are you?

>>8566047

Diogenes BTFO Plato on a frequent basis.

Plato's most enduring legacy is to have sent philosophy on a 2000-year wild goose chase.

Since the notion of "smart" implies non-arts, then, roughly and in no particular order:

Aristotle
Archimedes
Galilei
Descartes
Pascal
Newton
Leibniz
Gauss
Hilbert
Frege
Wittgenstein
Ramsey
von Neumann
Einstein
Grothendieck
Godel
Tarski
Kripke
Putnam

>Smartest known man of all time
Me.

>>8560774
and even he realised the superiority of napoleon

>>8566269
please tell me how diogenes "BTFO" one of the most original minds in western history. i'm all for public masturbation and chicken-plucking, but the extant sources on diogenes read more like aristophanes than herodotus.

plus, the "empty cup" anecdote completely (and popularly) misconstrues plato's world of forms, leading me to believe that a lot of it is horseshit.

>>8566297
How can anyone not think this?
One might put one's trust in others, but to do so one must assume that knows whom to trust more than anyone else.

>>8564310
It's technically a tie, both scored 100

>>8564677

Not sure if serious, but you're undercutting yourself.

It's like the issue with women and STEM achievement. They exist, but the number of men far outnumber the women. Some women will assume somehow by default that they're not as capable as men in STEM fields. They'll therefore not get a degree in those fields and choose some other field like law etc, thereby perpetuating the gender gap.

>>8564794
Wasn't he Sorbian or some shiet? We wuz mathematicians.

>>8560774
>white
>smartest

He isn't asian.

>>8567508
no im pretty sure Leibniz was fucking German

>>8567588
Ashkenazi Jews tend to be smarter than East Asians

Me

>>8567606
no

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>>8560774


Beethoven, his contemporary, was greater than Goethe, many time superior in his own art than Goethe was in his field. The world is much richer by having had a Beethoven in it than a Goethe.

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>>8567912
Agreed.

>>8564277
Who is?

>>8567912
>>8567927

Goethe’s social attitudes, like his musical tastes, were shaped in a more formal age. For Beethoven, 21 years his junior, the only true aristocrats were artists. In the mythology, his disillusionment was clinched by Goethe’s behaviour when they encountered royalty in the street, as reported 20 years later by Bettina: ‘Beethoven said to Goethe: keep walking as you have until now, holding my arm, they must make way for us, not the other way around. Goethe thought differently; he drew his hand, took off his hat and stepped aside, while Beethoven, hands in pockets, went right through the dukes and their cortege... They drew aside to make way for him, saluting him in friendly fashion. Waiting for Goethe who had let the dukes pass, Beethoven told him: “I have waited for you because I respect you and I admire your work, but you have shown too much esteem to those people.”’

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The most beatiful mind I ever encountered

I'd place J.S. Bach up there.

>>8564216
costanza

>>8567456
Are you saying that if somebody claims that somebody else is the smartest man in the world, that he can only do that if he himself is the smartest man in the world? I kind of have to agree. Still, a discussion about "smartness" is just estimates.

>>8567488
I'm sure that's the reason buddy. Everyone knows that when sexism is defeated all STEM fields will be 50% male and 50% female

>>8560774
Maybe I read a shitty translation, but Faust isn't *that* good. It's beautiful, yes, but not the greatest thing ever written.

>>8564035
Haha I love you.

>>8560865
>Christian
>not stupid
Pick one.

>>8566114
Why? Can you explain why Faust is so perfect with arguments other than "If you don't like it you're stupid LOL"?

I'm currently going through the Illiad and, while it's beautifully written, isn't really as good as everyone says it is. Shakespeare is better.

>>8567996
>At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

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>>8568991

>>8570597
He's not wrong, religion is a mental illness

>>8568978
You can't translate Faust, as german i can assure you this, it is like trying to read Shakespeare in german so many nuances are lost in the translation, even as a no english native speaker, can't help but notice it.

>>8570614
>the majority of humans throughout civilised society were mentally ill

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>>8564882
I hope you're not neglecting his critical writings, e.g. his piece on Shakespeare, whose revitalisation in the 17/18th century was due in large part to the Germans, or his aphorisms in Maximen und Reflexionen for that matter because the men said something about just about everything in those

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>>8570938
the man*
Source: my Goethe

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>>8570944
That's a lot of German books for a Dane.

>>8570959
To be honest it's my major, though I welcome our German overlords

>>8569042

Do you know what "taste" is?

>>8570984
I'll allow it.

>>8564035
Very nice

>>8567927
>>8567974

Can't help but feel that Goethe took the right approach here.

Beethoven was always a grumpy FUCK.

>>8569059
Every fucking time

>>8560774
rube goldberg spotted

>>8560774
Aristotle for most wonderful mind/most wise.
Newton for greatest pure genius.

>>8564353
>I don’t know where this tendency to see Neumann as a god has erupted, by I suspect it came after the Wikipedia article on him was made (with that section about the personal gossips of other Jewish scientists and anecdotal evidences).
I don't have any reaction image in my 50gb folder for how much this is retarded. This is /pol/-tier retard.

>>8560774
>Elon Musk
>Steve Jobs
>Mark Cuban

Did any of your so-called """""geniuses""""" build a billion dollar business and provide actual value (i.e. not just artistic or intellectual circle jerking) to hundreds of millions of people?

Though so.

How many of you are reading Faust right now?

And how many of you are on a Macbook or iPhone right now?

I rest my case.

>>8573720
There is actually some truth in it though

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>>8573760
>actual value
actual bait

>>8560774
Who ist this weak looking faggot?