3 ms·
I don't know why you have Francis Crick on that list. Franklin being on the same list as the others is also pretty weird.
by madhadron 8y ago
I don't know why you have Francis Crick on that list. Franklin being on the same list as the others is also pretty weird.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoYou don't think that Franklin was a polymath? That's a pretty jarring take, can you expand on it?
- madhadron 8y agoThe list in the parent comment was "legendary geniuses." Crick was certainly not that. He did a physics degree then did a bunch of half-assed work in biology. He stole some data, confounded the idea of gene and open reading frame so thoroughly that we're still trying to undo the damage decades later, and summarized a lot of early molecular biology results in an oversimplified way (the "central dogma") that we're still trying to teach people the real nuances of. On the whole he and Watson were probably a net negative for science. As for polymath, he certainly wasn't that. I've done physics, biology, statistics, software engineering, violinist, composer, dance historian, learned a bunch of languages, and written a novel. I'm a pretty pedestrian level polymath, and Crick was nowhere near me.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoWhich has what to do with Franklin, exactly?
- madhadron 8y agoOh, sorry. I misread. Franklin was certainly a polymath. But putting him in as a legendary genius next to da Vinci seems off.