GENIUS FORUMS

Just as an exercise, I wanted to list what I think are the 10 most significant scientific models that have changed humanities consciousness, and how we manipulate the outside world to make life better/easier.

Here are my top 10 in no particular order -

1. Causality
2. Evolution by Natural Selection
3. Plate tectonics/Rock Cycle
4. The function of the human cell/ with DNA
5. Newton’s Laws of motion
6. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
7. Aristotle’s law of identity
8. The model of the Atom and elements.
9. Masculine/Feminine Psychology analysis
10. Endocrinology as it relates to human behavior

What are your top 10?

I would replace "Masculine / feminine analysis" with "theories relating to the generation and transmission of electricity."

Microscopy needs to be up there, too, and the germ theory of disease...

Evolution
Genetics
Model of the atom / atomic decay
Theories of electricity (and magnetism) generation / transmission / storage
Germ theory of disease
Newton's laws of motion
Theory of relativity
Quantum mechanics
The idea that studying the brain will help us understand the mind
Human physiology (really an area of study, not a "theory")

Since you mentioned manipulating the world, I want to name top ten technological things, too:

Agriculture (and all its advances)
Learning how to build houses / stable structures
Cheap, easily made printing materials
Electric communication
Mechanization and automation of manufacture
Digitization
Microscopy
Engines
Computing / processors
Networking / the Internet

yeah, Germ theory of disease was definitely a breakthrough I failed to mention. It ended a lot of superstitution and bad science.

I should have also mentioned the theory that the universe is expanding, and how galaxies and material are being pulled with the expansion, which ends the fantasy that the earth is the center of the universe, as what many people first believed... hmmm, I wonder why humanity would want to believe that they are the center of the universe?

Philosophaster wrote:
Since you mentioned manipulating the world, I want to name top ten technological things, too:

Agriculture (and all its advances)
Learning how to build houses / stable structures
Cheap, easily made printing materials
Electric communication
Mechanization and automation of manufacture
Digitization
Microscopy
Engines
Computing / processors
Networking / the Internet

That's a pretty good list, but if we're talking about technological things, I think that metallurgical technique should be ranked above everything, given that everything technological, including agriculture, depends on the extraction of metals.

Quantum Mechanics in:
1. Organic Chemistry
2. Solid State Physics
3. Information Theory
Calculus
Genetics
Information Theory
General Theory of Relativity/Cosmological models
Hilbert Space Theory
(Infinite dimensional spaces and Fourier-like Transforms, where any function can be broken down into [finite or infinite] linear sums of discrete orthonormal or other basis vectors)
Any Evolutionary model that does not rest entirely on natural selection as a mechanism (just as an acorn in some sense contains a shape of the ensuing tree if not the eventual shape, which is affected by environment, so must the DNA of ancestor organisms in some sense carry information predestined to eventuate as later descendant species. An intelligent mind cannot rule out the possibility of intelligent design, no matter how it may turn the stomach.)
Set Theory in Mathematics, although I have never studied much of it itself, results from set theory seem to crop up more and more in popular scientific weltanschauungs.
The Laws ofThermodynamics, in which Entropy can link concepts like temperature and information theory via considerations of degrees-of-freedom on an atomic scale or just theoretically
Statistical Theory, especially the Gaussian (bell-shaped) distribution and the Law of Large Numbers, which states that no matter the intrinsic distribution(s) of (a) random variable(s) you are studying, if you take a large enough sample, it always reduces to the Gaussian distribution
There’s a lot of overlap in the above, but we are speaking of hard science, which is closer to the mountain top of pure math where views and disciplines tend to merge and broaden each other at the same time.
I was going to add Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, but I think I have ten already and maybe Vicdan wants to give his list.
Newtonian Mechanics and Classical EM Theory can be subsumed into Calculus and Hilbert Space Theory.

I've seen scores of these lists over the years in various themed forums and have always found it interesting that no-one ever mentions the models/theories of Adam Smith,Karl Marx,Fred Hayek or John Maynard Keynes.In fact if this was made a top 30 I imagine they still wouldn't make the list(maybe Marx would with a few)

If by significant it is meant "impact on humans day to day lives" then I can think of none more than 'markets'.

Governments don't live or die according to their opinion on whether matter acts as a wave and particle.Wars aren't fought over the double helix.

By no means am I belittling any discovery by science or the humanities.I just find it rather intruiging that people rarely see what really effects their lives "where the rubber hits the road"

I misunderstood what was meant by the term "scientific." If it were altogether left out as a modifier on "models/theories," economic and even religious formalism would have come to my own mind. But I am less familiar with those, I admit.

No you probably didn't mate.I was just using this thread to sound off a bit.

The 'Christianity' model is a fairly good point actually, as far as impact goes.