If you could have a science lesson...

[Jacob(smooth)]

If you could have a science lesson as a one to one tutorial with any scientist, in any field, alive or dead (insert "I'd have one of the live ones" joke here) who would you pick? And why?

Einstein? Hawking? Oppenheim? Tesla? Darwin?

[Angrboda]

I probably wouldn't pick a physical scientist. If I had to pick, it would likely be a mathematician or a logician. If I have to narrow the field, I'd choose either Saul Kripke or Kurt Godel. I'd learn more from Kripke than anyone else, but the learning isn't the sole attraction. Other possibilities: Alfred Tarski, Gottlob Frege, W.V.O. Quine, Daniel Dennett, David Hume, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Georg Cantor, David Hilbert, Alfred Turing, Heraclitus, Democritus, Diogenes, Pythagoras, Sappho, Hypatia, Zoroaster, Confucius, Lao Tzu or Chuang Tse. There are a lot of historical thinkers who I'd love an intense one-to-one experience with. If I did it for the physical sciences, it'd be in cosmology or astrophysics; probably Roger Penrose or David Bohm. Both are brilliant, and both have beliefs that I'm fundamentally at odds with, and both could teach me about the nature of the universe as a whole. (I disagree with Penrose's philosophy of mind, and Bohm's attachment to hidden variable theory.)

(ETA: Oh, and I'd give my eye-teeth just to have lunch with Emmy Noether.)

[max-greece]

I'd have to go for Brian Cox. He is one of the few physicists I feel I can understand. IMHO he is the best at dumbing this shit down for someone like me.

Second choice would be Lawrence Krauss but I can follow him only so for before he says something like "and that means....." whilst is invariably a link that I don't get.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Archimedes. For sheer breadth of knowledge, I don't think he has an equal in all of human history. Given that he considered himself primarily a mathematician, he practical achievements are nothing short of astonishing.

Boru

[KichigaiNeko]

Brian Cox or Neil De Grasse Tyson.

[LastPoet]

I would go for a class with Dick Feynman

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I've been in a lecture given by Brian Cox at a science festival and he's very engaging.

He's also very good at putting the dross some people bring up ("But how can you discount creation?!") in it's place quickly and firmly. Always good when a creationist gets put in their place and the audience applaud, as happened the last time I went to the Cheltenham science festival.

[Psykhronic]

Brian Cox is the most adorable fucking physicist I have ever seen. I'd like to see him lecture, but I'd prefer to see Neil deGrasse Tyson since he's such a badass.

And for dead people, probably Tesla. I'd love to see a lecture of his just bashing Edison - I bet it'd be the wittiest, most hilarious shit ever.

[NoraBrimstone]

Brian Cox! When I went to Geneva and visited CERN I was really hoping I'd get the opportunity to molest him. I'm still disappointed. :(

[pocaracas]

pfff, Feynman, of course!
Then off to a drums jam!

---

---