Add Carl Friedrich Gauss to the Great Scientists List

[kaybeebiscuits]

Carl Friedrich Gauss:



I am surprised to find out that Carl Friedrich Gauss is not part of the Great Scientists list. Gauss was one of the big 3, on par with Galileo and Newton, in terms of his insight and contributions to science and mathematics, yet he was excluded.

To understand this man's genius even further, it was found by Wagner, the great anatomist, and his brain was "one of the most highly convoluted brains" ever recorded, which was possibly "a sign of his genius":



The brain on the left is an ordinary brain while the one on the right is Gauss' brain.



Yet another picture of the great mathematician's brain (left) compared to an ordinary human (center).

To my knowledge, not even Einstein's brain (see below) was as complex as that of Gauss:



Yet another comparison:



If the number of cerebral convolutions is a sign of a person's character, personality, intellect and mental capacity, I see little other reason to justify the inclusion of Gauss into the great scientists list.

Let's see it happen!

[Pouakai]

So, we're including this guy because of the size of his brain? What exactly did he do in the aforementioned fields?

[Kukulcán]

I believe he was a mathematician, not going to look it up at the moment.

And as for Brain size, Neanderthals had larger brain sizes than us, doesnt make them geniuses though.

[Shadow717]

Let there be Gauss! And on the topic of great scientists: If it hasn't been fixed already by a patch (saw this a while ago so maybe it has been) please fix Nikola Tesla's name. It is NOT spelt Nichola

[Shiav]

SPERM WHALESSSSSSSS

Seriously their brains are gigantic.

Also, the size of one's brain, like the number of pages in a book, does nothing for the quality of the ideas it encompasses.

[SamBC]

To be fair, the diagrams included aren't just about brain size - they're about the concept of cortex surface area.

[Shiav]

To be fair, the diagrams included aren't just about brain size - they're about the concept of cortex surface area.

True, but that still doesn't beat the book argument. Moby Dick clocks in at about 700 pages, 135 Chapters and 211 thousand words. It was a good book and I recommend reading it. As opposed to a book I'm thinking of, it has 12 thousand words and runs around 65ish pages. The Communist Manifesto changed the entire world, brought hope to millions, and war to millions more. It created nations, shook empires and spread to every continent. Yet it is 1/18th the size.

Not saying Gauss isn't good or anything, but you have to give more reasons than "He has a huge brain! ZOMG!"

[kaybeebiscuits]

It's not just Gauss who has an outstanding brain actually. There is another that I know of with a neo-cortex that is so extremely well developed, that its coincidence with his supreme intellectual ability cannot be a mere correlation.

Quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis

William James Sidis (pronounced /ˈsaɪ dɪs/; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic abilities. His IQ was estimated to be between 250 and 300 (measures of IQ have changed over time since then)[1] - one of the highest ever recorded[1] - he entered Harvard early at age 11, and as an adult it was claimed he was conversant in over 40 languages and dialects. However it was later acknowledged that some of these estimations about Sidis and his intelligence were only exaggerations.[2] He became famous first for his precocity, and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on other subjects under a number of pseudonyms.

From a core website dedicated to Sidis:

After his death, Sidis' undamaged left hemisphere was extracted and studied. Found were convolutions of extreme compactness that exceeded the description of any brain known to date. His frontal lobe and parietal cortex were so well developed that it had nearly 3 times the number of fissures that were more than twice as deep as a normal brain.

William James Sidis' left hemisphere:


Compare it with a normal human brain:


Sadly, his right hemisphere could not be studied because it was largely destroyed due to a stroke.

[stethnorun]

Do we not remember that Keybee is a known troll on these forums? Come on people.

[Shiav]

Do we not remember that Keybee is a known troll on these forums? Come on people.

Alas, I have been gone so long I had forgotten.

Whatever happened to that infinite thread that would never die? Something about the Akhaisic records or some codswollop?

[jpbar81]

Do we not remember that Keybee is a known troll on these forums? Come on people.

^ This.




Also, don't forget, inserting images into your posts is a really cool thing to do.

[kaybeebiscuits]

True, but that still doesn't beat the book argument. Moby Dick clocks in at about 700 pages, 135 Chapters and 211 thousand words. It was a good book and I recommend reading it. As opposed to a book I'm thinking of, it has 12 thousand words and runs around 65ish pages. The Communist Manifesto changed the entire world, brought hope to millions, and war to millions more. It created nations, shook empires and spread to every continent. Yet it is 1/18th the size.

Not saying Gauss isn't good or anything, but you have to give more reasons than "He has a huge brain! ZOMG!"

Well there is another reason besides his accomplishments and his huge brain.

Cited from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1005434

The brain of Gauss, with its degree of gyrification so complex and subtle, has not been matched by any of the 680 brains in the first study of the brains of intellectuals. Such marvel can we gaze at such a brain so refined that we cannot help but consider it to be a wonder of nature, or at the very least an utmost rarity in the course of evolution.

Adding Gauss to the list is like doing 2 things at once: it adds a deserving great person, and at the same time, adds a new natural wonder to the game.

Do we not remember that Keybee is a known troll on these forums? Come on people.

I'm a human-troll hybrid. Not 100% pure troll Having both human and troll DNA allows me to empathize with the best of both worlds.

[Shiav]

You never did say why a large brain alone should justify his inclusion. His achievements aren't that noteworthy compared to the great people currently in the game. And as I have already said, a sperm whale's brain is larger than most animals.

[Pouakai]

Hey, come on now. It's obvious that Sperm Whale #2395384 should be a Great Scientist, his brain's the size of a car!

[kaybeebiscuits]

You never did say why a large brain alone should justify his inclusion. His achievements aren't that noteworthy compared to the great people currently in the game. And as I have already said, a sperm whale's brain is larger than most animals.

Well here is the reasoning using a famous theorem developed by an old Russian ex-psychologist:


Argument of the Synergy of Mind and Brain:

Argument 1) The mind is something that can neither be felt nor touched, let alone held. It is thus a mental entity.

Argument 2) The equivalent of this mental entity, necessitating a relation to reality (because otherwise, it will be purely a mental object), is a physical counterpart of the mind, which is the brain.

Conclusion 1) Brain is thus mind objectified and solidified.


Argument of the Synergy of Achievement and Brain

Argument 1) A person is the physical and behavioral manifestation of the mind.

Argument 2) Since by Conclusion (1), the mind is the brain, the totality of a person's personality, intellect, virtue, creativity, achievement, memory et cetera, are all manifestations of the brain.

Conclusion 2) The achievements of a person, by Conclusion (1) as well, is thus achievement personified, and materialized in the form of physical, measurable qualities as displayed by the brain.


Therefore, by the above 2 arguments, we can come to the conclusion:

Conclusion A) Having a huge and heavily convoluted brain corresponds to high intellect and potentially great achievements, which are manifested in the person, which in this case, it is Gauss.

Lemma 1) A person's measurable achievement is seen through the outward recognition of that potential.

Conclusion B) Therefore, by Lemma 1 and the above conclusion, since Gauss' achievements are so well recognized and acknowledged to be extremely great, it must therefore be recognized that he is a great person by virtue of his brain.

Conclusion C) Since Conclusions 2 and B are both logical tautologies, it necessarily goes that Conclusion 1 must be true since the above 2 theorems were derived from conclusion 1, which means there is a causal relationship between them.

Therefore in conclusion, it can be argued that a huge and powerful brain, ONLY if his/her potential and achievements (Lemma 1) have been recognized, that it does qualify a person to be a great person by virtue of his/her brain (A whale is not a great person because its achievements are not recognized or manifest physically).

This is known as the theorem of Brain-Achievement Equivalence.

[Shiav]

Seriosuly, you're trolling isn't even fun anymore. Also, don't trust Russian psychologists. Our entire culture is manically depressive. Ever read Tolstoy? Yeah. Our greatest author makes his protagonist commit suicide. How's that for a national conscience?

[Pouakai]

When was it funny?

[Shiav]

When was it funny?

The akhasic records? they had their moments. The racist evolutionary picture?

[kaybeebiscuits]

Seriosuly, you're trolling isn't even fun anymore. Also, don't trust Russian psychologists. Our entire culture is manically depressive. Ever read Tolstoy? Yeah. Our greatest author makes his protagonist commit suicide. How's that for a national conscience?

Alright, alright. To repent for my wrongdoings I shall now clarify some true facts.

Q: Does greater neural mass in human beings (larger brain size) give rise to a higher level of intelligence?

A: Maybe. There is a 0.3 to 0.4 positive correlation between brain size and intelligence. Not very significant, but it might still account for some. There are exceptions of course; to my knowledge, there have been highly intelligent men and women with brain sizes significantly below average (such as Einstein).

Q: Does greater cortical thickness do the same?

A: Maybe. A recent paper published in the past 5 years has shown that there is a modest correlation between cortical thickness in the frontal and occipital lobe region (depending on gender; apparently there is a negative correlation for males for some areas) with intelligence. The correlation is statistically significant but not entirely high (only around 0.4). We also note that Einstein's cerebral cortex is actually thinner than usual, and another finding contends that it is the developmental pathway of cortical thickness that matters more so than its overall thickness (gifted people seem to start off with a thinner cortex).

Q: How about cortical convolution?

A: This has been argued ad nauseam in the past, but there has no confirmatory findings since highly intelligent individuals can have both highly convoluted brains or extremely simple brains. Modern findings have found that there is a modest correlation between cortical convolution with intelligence in only some areas of the brain; the pre-frontal lobe being the most essential, however, even so, the correlation is not very high. The case of Gauss' brain is a debatable one. I have seen a photo of his actual brain, including a recent MRI scan of it from a German paper, and it seems that its convolutional complexity has been greatly exaggerated. I strongly suspect that the scientists who actually studied his brain exaggerated the drawings. There is also a disease known as micropolygyria, whereby the victim has an overly developed cerebrum, but has mental retardation.

Q: What other biological factors affect intelligence?

A: Other biological factors might include the actual amount of graymatter in some areas of the brain, as well as the size of the corpus callosum that connects both hemispheres of the brain. The latter only has a modest correlation as usual, but studies have shown that only around 6% of the brain's total surface area seem to correlate very well with intelligence, that being the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and some areas of the parietal lobe. It is not confirmed if having more neural matter in these areas is a result of higher cortical complexity or density, but it is a likely combination of all factors. Likewise, intelligence is probably a combination all factors (plus more that have not been discovered) as mentioned here. Other factors might include special arrangements of the neurons themselves, the degree of myelination and perhaps the amount of glial cells.

P.S: The Brain-Achievement Theorem does not exist by the way, it was all conjured as a result of sophistry.

[Shiav]

snip

I realised as much. You do know that a .4 correlation, while statistically significant, means that the majority of variation in intelligence does not depend whatsoever on your brain?

And I attempted to google your BAT, but found it to be an achievement in WoW.

What Actually matters as Far as Intelligence is Concerned:

Opportunity. Being in the right place at the right time is a major factor in ones success. Sun Yat Sen was in America at the time of the first Chinese revolution in 1911. He missed his opportunity, which allowed northern warlords to take control of the country. Because of this his successor, Chiang Kai-Shek, had to ally with the communists in order to help defeat them. Though he would attempt to eradicate the communists they would ultimately prove his downfall. Wrong place at the wrong time.

Passion. Thomas Edison is widely credited with the invention of the lightbulb. While this can be debated, as it was a Canadian bloke who invented the filament and another American who invented the vacuumed chamber, it was Edison who ultimately combined everything around him in order to get the job done. The famous quote of "finding 1000 ways not to invent a lightbulb", while hyperbole, illustrates why he was successful. Passion is your greatest and truest desire. Passion is what drives you. Passion drove him to work and work and fail and fail because his greatest desire in the world was to succeed.

Lesser Factors/Field Specific Factors

Personality. No matter how smart you are, if you have the personality of a tea spoon you will not be successful. You will not be remembered. Look at any election and you can see the results of this.

Organization. Santorum talks one hell of a game, but he wasn't able to get on the ballot of six states. Romney was. Romney is going to be the next GOP presidential candidate because he runs an organized, funded campaign. Opportunity + Organization are the mechanisms of politics. Hence why Josef Stalin was able to gain power. His nickname was "Comrade Index Card" for his meticulousness.

[inquisitiveowl]

Um, guys...

[dukeisaac]

Hahahahahahaha

[Shiav]

Ahahaahahaahahahaahaahahahaha

+10 internets for you

[Pouakai]

Next on the agenda, adding Kuala Lumpur as a new city state

[Shiav]

Next on the agenda, adding Kuala Lumpur as a new city state

I thought the next order of business was adding Suckville, Michigan as a city state? I demand answers!

[Kukulcán]

Well played inquisitive!

And why don't we have Kuala Lumpur in yet? Their brains remain ginormous to this day!

[Black Gate of Mordor]

What? That's not next.

WE HAVE TO ADD SPAIN! WHY ISN'T SPAIN IN YET GUYS?

[kaybeebiscuits]

lol, that certainly got me.

I have never seen Gauss after all the time I have played Civilization V.

Anyway, as a bonus, here is an updated photograph of Gauss' brain:

[inquisitiveowl]

Haha, thanks. I knew I'd seen him before, but couldn't remember if it was Civ IV or V. He showed up at a convenient time yesterday

[MadDjinn]

Lesser Factors/Field Specific Factors

Personality. No matter how smart you are, if you have the personality of a tea spoon you will not be successful. You will not be remembered. Look at any election and you can see the results of this.

Organization. Santorum talks one hell of a game, but he wasn't able to get on the ballot of six states. Romney was. Romney is going to be the next GOP presidential candidate because he runs an organized, funded campaign. Opportunity + Organization are the mechanisms of politics. Hence why Josef Stalin was able to gain power. His nickname was "Comrade Index Card" for his meticulousness.

oh see, this is where counter arguments about intelligence fail.

Politicians are definitely not on the intelligence scale. Santorum has a high 'Evangelical christian' score, which is inversely proportionate to intelligence. So it really wasn't his fault for not remembering to register everywhere, given that's what he hired others to do for him.