Great Thinkers and Visionaries
This is a list of people whose ideas on how and where the world is - and
should be - evolving, may be of interest to those who want to understand
the frontier of human thought, at least according to
my opinion.
Originally I created it to give credit to people who influenced
my ideas but as it often happens the project
took a life of its own. Please enjoy these resources. It would be great if
you could
support this site or
help me improve it.
Now you can also
take part in the discussions on the Visionaries mailing list or on the
Delphi Thinkers Forum
I apologize if my selection of thinkers is not sufficiently balanced.
In
Russia,
reading most of them could get me into Big Trouble.
I hope to fix these gaps now - with your help.
You may also want to take part in the
efforts that
should lead to distribution of visionary ideas based on their merits
rather then cute facade or interests of social power structures.
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Quick guide to this page:
facehome page of a thinker
booksBooks by this thinker
Related web links - live search with AltaVistaOther web pages (live search)
usenetCurrent usenet discussions
Candidates to the list
Here are some people I am considering adding to the list of Thinkers,
while I am learning more about their work and the
impact of their ideas and activities, and trying to find time to include
them, and their books, into the list. I would probably have to redesign
the site (see ideas below) before I expand it any further, as this page
already takes too long to load.
Visionary Scientists
Modern Visionary Technocrats
Visionary Philosophers
Visionary Leaders and Activists
Visionary Writers
Visionary Inventors
Also (partly classified, advice welcome)
Famous Non-visionaries
I am opening this section to answer multiple requests to include some people
that I subbornly refuse to consider visionaries.
If you have good arguments to the contrary, I'd gladly listen to them.
Villains and Kooks
There are many people wose ideas about the future are reasonable or respected
but who are misguided about the subjects of methods of their visions.
Even though they may not lead to constructive results, erroneous visions
deserve a special study.
Here is a modest initial selection:
- Karl Marx - his main mistakes,
in my
opinion, were the seductively misleading idea that complex social processes
may be explained and governed by a simple set of rules, similarly to those
suggested by Newton for mechanical systems, and undue extrapolation of
social trends of his time. Something we could learn from now...
- Adolf Hitler
One of the most successful proponents of nationalism in history,
Hitler gave us some very good lessons. We paid too much for these
lessons not to learn from them.
- Vladimir Lenin did the same thing for communist ideas.
- Nostradamus - an author of a set of vast, vague, and unsubstantiated claims about the future, which were
less unexcusable in his time than in ours.
- Jeremy Rifkin. - In the words of Charles Platt, "I believe Rifkin is the commentator who poses the greatest
threat to attempts to transcend limitations of the human
condition." Godling's Glossary defines Rifkin's kind of theories as
Disasturbation
- All religious thinkers that ever lived, for mistaking emotionally charged metaphors for the objective reality?
If you have any opinion on these people and URLs of their pages,
or have other candidates who you think should be listed here,
please
mail them to me!
(I do not promise to include them, however. They may be wonderful people,
but I may not understand - or agree with - their work, or think that they
belong more to Great Scientists or Activists than Visionaries, etc.)
Please do not suggest me to represent more women or other
physiological groups. This is a page about minds, not flesh! If you
have a candidate, please mail me the name, URL, and why you think the
ideas of this person are so crucial for understanding the
progress of the Universe today.
The selection process is getting more and more difficult for me, as the amount
of suggestions I receive has outgrown both my knowledge of important people
and the amount of "free" time I can devote to maintaining this page.
I am working on a formal set of criteria for accepting and classifying nominations,
and would like to turn this page - already with about 60,000 visitors a year - can turn
into an objective public resource. For that, I would need assistance and funding.
Please let me know if you can help in any way. Meanwhile, you can at least click
on a few ads on this site, to add a few cents to its development.
If you are interested please read the
the draft proposal for the Thinkers site development and suggest your comments.
I have absolutely no time to answer criticisms of the current state of the site
coming from people who haven't read the proposal, and are not suggesting any help.
Sorry.
Other Lists of Great people
o
Halcyon List of thinkers
o
Estimated IQs of some of the greatest geniuses
o
InforSeek list of Internet Celebrities
o
Technoprophets
o
Celebrities in Cognitive Science
o
Dave Krieger's list of Exceptional people
o
Warped People page
o
Glass Bead Game - Biographies of great people
o
Eric's Treasure Trove of Scientific
Biography
o
Scientists: biographies
o
UTNE Reader list of Visionaries
They can't tell the difference between thinkers, dreamers, executives, and social activists,
and the choice is somewhat mainstream (not
extreme like mine ;-) )
but some people there are interesting.
o
Great Mathematicians
o
Prominent Anarchists and Left-Libertarians
o
Great Writers and Poets
o
Prominent sociologists
o
Great Canadian Scientists
o
Celebrity Atheist List
and Famous Dead Non-theists
- people who have advocated living life without deference to a higher power.
o
Major Western Philosophers
Some people whose example you may not want to follow:
Kooks museumKooks museum
The best way to understand great thinkers is to join them!
If you are an aspiring visionary, you may find the following Web resources
useful:
Self-Publishing solution from BookNooks
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Anders Transhuman Page
Nobel
Nobel Foundation,
Nobel Prize Internet Archive
WFSGBCWorld Future Society
(Greater Boston Chapter)
[IMAGE]
Frontier Organizations on the Web
Best mailing lists on the Net
Cafe
The Great Books of Western Civilization Cafe
Events
Upcoming visionary events