(April 18, 2015 at 8:23 pm)Brian37 Wrote: "Great" people is a point of view...
Rejection of "Great Man" theories is a politically motivated liberal thing, natural because liberals value equality. Yet it's clear that some people do matter more than others by almost any meaningful criterion. I agree with the notion that ideas or inventions may come approximately when the time is ripe for them; i.e. the airplane would have been invented pretty soon if the Wright brothers hadn't done it. But not just anyone can invent planes and it's clear we do have intellectual leaders who take the initiative. It might be better to speak of a "Great Pool" who drive progress rather than crediting only individuals.
(April 17, 2015 at 9:39 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: ...live long lives and continue produce good works very late in their lives?
You could try George Bernard Shaw, who wrote plays in his nineties. There is a known correlation between IQ and longevity, though I don't think any genetic basis has yet been shown for it. High IQ folks tend to get better jobs and thus better housing, diet, working conditions, and health care. They can advocate for themselves more effectively when injustice strikes.
The only two common denominators I see in persons who are later recognized as "great" are that they attracted followings and that they pursued goals we find morally or intellectually desirable. The latter just rules out the "anti-greats" like Napoleon. In a few cases there's no large following either, as with discovered "greats" like the Dr. Snow who convinced the London town fathers to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump, thus stopping the Cholera epidemic in 1854.
