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Anonymous Dude's avatar

The rest, Marx, Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hegel, I'll agree with. Marx in particular may have indirectly gotten more people killed than anyone else. Buuuttt...

Calculus has numerous practical applications in engineering. I know a couple engineers and you really can't do your job without it. MRIs to diagnose disease rely on the fast Fourier transform to make the pictures. Whether it should be taught to every high school student is another thing, it's really more for engineers and statistics is much more practical for most people. (Knowing how people manipulate outliers in averages, for instance...)

As for Ptolemy, that's been translated from ancient Greek and he may have been more lucid to his original audience.

Plato in particular is massively overrated IMHO.

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Dr.Morton's avatar

I was never much for academia's love fest of old dead guys. I tend to refer to all philosophers as old dead guys to remind everyone they are not saints.

I feel like philosophy and cynicism go hand in hand far to often, not that its a good reason to be an asshole, but I do understand how one could develop hatred if they lived in a cynical reality.

I can appreciate you shifting the needle on their revered status.

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