Ummm...so were those Madonna/C. Clarke vote serious?
I love Clarke (Madonna...no) but really, THHGTTG isn't the most important book..ever...produced...
OK, well, maybe it's the greatest book ever to come out of the publishing company of Ursa Minor, but still...
And a LOT of repeats--CHECK THE LIST before you post, folks, that's what it's for. ;)
And to answer spyman: yes, I have read "The 100," that was my inspiration for this, that and the philosophers' poll we had (I disagree with his rankings a bit, by the way...good overall, but even though I'm not at all a proponent of Christianity...Jesus should've been #1, you found the religion that ensnares most of the world, for better or worse, for a LOT of both, I guess, and you go #3? Newton's HUGELY IMPORTANT, but to me ideas, especially philosophical and religious ideas, trump empirical ideas and other great accomplishments, I just think the former informs the latter...Newto WAS a Christian, after all...so the man he followed goes behind him? And Mohammad as #1 is an interesting argument but to me if you're going to give the top spot to a religious figure the biggest religion with the most impact should win out, and that, for better or worse, is Christianity and Mr. Christ...and to be honest, for as much as I disagree with much of Christian dogmatism...I DO actually like Christ a sa figure, mostly, a bit too passive, but really I can't find too much fault with him directly, one quibble I DO have with Nietzsche, though he places Jesus slightly above his followers on his scale, still not too high.)
In response to why Plato over Aristotle:
-Plato taught Aristotle, so like I said, with me edge goes to the first one, or, in this case, the teacher; Aristotle disagreed with much of what Plato said, but a lot of his works are built on that idea, providing an alternative to Plato--no Plato, no Aristotle, not as we know him, at least that's my argument.
-A lot of Aristotle's ideas wre grounded in his attempts at science, and while it IS significant that he was one of the first "scientists," he still got hnearly everything wrong, and that DOES hurt his philosophy somewhat, especially on the metaphysical level; Plato's taken a hit here and there too, but I think has survived FAR better, his "Phaedo," the legendary dialogue in which he argues for the immortality of the soul, is STILL influential in discussion in that area, in religious studies, because many of Plato's ideas are independent of physics, he relies more on the mind and the Forms, the latter of which are not taken too seriously anymore but his arguments with the former still hold up well enough to make his dialogues work. Finally, while Aristotle WAS a great ethical philosopher and still stands as one of the giants in that field, at least one of the first giants, Plato was and still is big in metaphysics, ethics, epistomology, and politics, with his "The Republic" arguably being the most important philosophical text in the West.
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, the 20th century Existentialists--many grow out of the ideas of the Greeks, Keirkegaard and Nietzsche especially, and Plato just seems to have the slight edge over Aristotle--though he should be on the list as well.
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some gunboats
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