Greatest Modern Day Thinker

Recently I was reading some article about the greatest modern day thinker. The question is very intriguing that it created so much interest thus varied responses. One blip though that is not too difficult to miss is the geographic identification of those nominated. Hawkings, Friedman, Einstein, Sowell, Ayn Rand, Berners-Lee, Andreessen, with Gandhi being the exception.

I'm even wondering whether the Japanese suceeded in their pursuit of excellence without thinking, of whether not a single soul from 2.5 billion chinese and indians are capable of thinking. Or perhaps it is a third world reflection of intellectual allofness.

Or maybe, just maybe, less developed countries like the Philippines don't do so much thinking, the very reason why it remained underdevelop.

I tried to answer the question, nonetheless, just for its cents worth. Who really is the greatest modern day thinker?

First I have to define what is a thinker, and second what modern day means.

Let me start with the second. Modern day. If it means present day then it is very difficult to give justice. If it means the last 50 years, then we could somehow glimps on some and see who they are. So let us define modern day as the last 50 years.

What is a thinker? Do monks think when they meditate? most likely they do. A cyclist is said to make millions of decisions while on bike so it means the cycling cyclist is a thinker (and think of it, they train for about 8 to 10 hours a day). And how about the chess player, the computer hacker, they are all thinkers. If the question means the thinker who has the greatest enfluence on our lives; or the thinker who have change the way we see things like copernicus or Darwin; then we could narrow it down to fields of expertise like politics, physics, economics, mathematics; then narrow it down by placing geographic bounderies like western thought, eastern. Because it is hard to compare the chinese scholar to an american scholar, specially if they are covering different diciplines.

Having nominated no one in particular, I think the greatest thinker of all is the flat screen in front of you