EGarrett comments on Productivity as a function of ability in theoretical fields - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Stefan_Schubert 26 January 2014 01:16PM

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Comment author: AnthonyC 27 January 2014 02:03:56PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure I would agree with the premise that Aristotle is less important than Einstein. Einstein greatly accelerated several fields of physics. Aristotle has long since been superceded in essentially every field, but his ideas still inform (indirectly) more modern work in logic, ethics, metaphysics, and so on. He was certainly productive, no doubt about that.

Also, there's no finite set of important solvable problems. Today, the available solvable problems may or may not be in physics, but there are plenty on other fields.

Comment author: EGarrett 01 February 2014 07:05:58AM *  0 points [-]

Aristotle in all likelihood was relating ideas that were collected already in his personal library or the Library of Alexandria. The way he wrote about the various topics he did implied that they were coming from other sources.