What if X wasn't born?

[ddstory]

OK, it's alternate history month. So here's a question. Do certain brilliant and/or remarkable persons bear crucial significance for the various twists and turns of history, or do they just happen to be the right people showing up at the right time? I mean, if there's a certain set of processes going on in a society, is the emerging of a great

Comments

[htpcl]

It's a mixture of both. I don't know what ratio, it's sometimes purely genius, other times the time is ripe. Depends on the particular case. Take Galileo, he just happened to point a new gadget at the sky and see Jupiter's satellites. Then he connected the dots. What is to say someone else wouldn't have done the same if he wasn't there? Maybe a few years later, but it would've happened eventually. Same with all those sailors who discovered new lands. If it weren't them, someone else would've reached there eventually.

Now, political leaders are a different story. Sure, Hitler happened to be the right (actually: wrong) guy at the time things were ripe for Germany to go nuts and plunge Europe into another war. But what about some guys who did pretty unique things that didn't make any sense at the time, but had a great impact, like Alexander the Great, etc? All I'm saying is that it varies.

I'd say it's more like events happen when the circumstances demand them to happen, but it often takes an extraordinary person to facilitate it.

[underlankers]

Alexander the Great is actually one of the easiest ones to have never be born and things happen just the same. The reasons are twofold: Philip III launched the invasion and Darius III was not capable of forming the Persian Empire into a coherent military power resisting invasion. So instead of Alexander the Great it'd be Philip the Great and a great many Philippolises instead of Alexandrias.

[htpcl]

My town Plovdiv was once named Philipopolis. It's the 6th oldest still-inhabited city in the world, 1st in Europe. Philipopolis wasn't even its 2nd or 3rd name, btw.

[mahnmut]

Wait, we're not sure Jesus Christ even existed.

[underlankers]

A historical Jesus of Nazareth did exist, there is evidence enough for that that the biggest proponent of the Jesus Myth theory recently recanted his views. The figure that founded Christianity, OTOH, did not. Unless we hold that Zombie Apocalypses in Jerusalem would have gone without mentioning.

[ddstory]

Jesus doesn't sound like a given name. Whoever would name their baby "Savior"?

[mahnmut]

Someone who met an angel in their dreams.

[underlankers]

I voted for Confucius (his not existing butterflies away the ideology of China that held together one of the oldest systems in human history in terms of continuous existence), Euclid (who established forever the right angle to look at things), and Genghis Khan (whose death butterflies away the modern world as we know it. Full-stop).

[sandwichwarrior]

The fact that Newton isn't winning the Science poll by a margin of "# of votes cast" makes this engineering geek sad.

[mutive]

Didn't he basically just steal stuff from Liebniz? (Who didn't even make the poll. OK, sure Newton did give an easier to use nomenclature. Which is of value. But still...I think it's pretty goofy to imagine that calculus and physics wouldn't exist just because Newton had never been born.)

[notmrgarrison]

Newton is much more known for his physics than for his math.

[johnny9fingers]

The Newton-Leibniz invention of calculus is often quoted as the best-known example of synchronicity.
But the Principia is pretty universally regarded as the most important book of science ever written, if you have Latin enough to read it. (I report this not having enough of a grasp of the language to have read the Principia in the original.)

[peristaltor]

People underestimate the "time is ripe" phenomenon. For example, most of the folks in your lists just happened to do something a bit different, not something completely unique. Watt didn't invent the steam engine; he improved on Newcommen's design, which was an improvement on Saverly's. Watt's engines, though, were double the efficiency of Newcommen's, and he created a unique licensing process that got him remembered. Instead of Watt, I would nominate Stephenson, the guy who took all of the steam engine design ideas and created The Rocket, the first practical steam locomotive

[the_rukh]

It would suck to dump the entire city powergrid through your body to ground because you accidentally used your blow dryer while still wet from the shower.

[il_mio_gufo]

I would nominate Tesla instead of Edison

not that i drink much or anything ;) but shoot I'll drink to that. My poor Tesla - what a hard life he had :(

[ddstory]

He looked pretty screwed in The Prestige movie. :)