How to Smash an Atom
Germany vs. Greece
From Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Greeks
- Archimedes (287-212 bc): Mathematician, inventor
- Aristotle (384-322 bc): Alexander the Great's tutor
- Democritus (460-370 bc): Developed the atomic theory
- Empedacles (490-430 bc): Theory of earth, air, fire, water
- Epictetus (55-135 bc): Stoic
- Epicurus (341-270 bc): Touted testing and observation
- Heraclitus (535-475 bc): Believed that all is change
- Plato (428-348 bc): Accomplished wrestler
- Plotinus (205-270 bc): Believed in The One
- Socrates (469-399 bc): Put to death for corrupting youth
- Sophocles (496-406 bc): Playwright
The Germans
- Beckenbauer (1945-): Soccer manager, former player
- Hegel (1770-1831): Famously difficult
- Heidegger (1889-1976): A Nazi, unfortunately
- Jaspers (1883-1969): Existentialist
- Kant (1724-1804): Worked in ethics & elsewhere
- Leibniz (1646-1716): World is monads
- Marx (1818-83): Founder of communism
- Nietzsche (1844-1900): "God is dead...and we killed him"
- Schelling (1775-1854): History is progressive
- Schlegel (1772-1829): Poet & critic, too
- Schopenhauer (1788-1860): "Life is a...process of dying"
- Wittgenstein (1889-1951): Austrian, not German