Obviously it's the "Psycho" one because it's only a movie about a crazy hotel owner. And because ever since seeing it, I'm afraid to close my eyes in the shower...

I am with Emily. But that answer seems too easy.

And why would Psycho be "culturally significant"? That is embarrassing.

I could not find a legal definition of "culturally significant", so it may not mean anything.

The word culture "...refers to human activity; different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists use the term to refer to the universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. They regard this capacity as a defining feature of the genus Homo."

So Psycho is probably considered "significant" since it communicates various aspects of human experience (madness, horror, "ways of seeing", etc) in a symbolic (and, some would argue, inspired and masterful) way.

I agree, Psycho, but it does seem to be the obvious answer.

So, maybe it is another choice, I'm sure there is an explanation beyond our thinking of why we could erase Newton. Who need calculus?

whoever the fuck Humphrey is, I think I will argue with the answer whatever it is. But Newton (17th century not 20th!) deals with a limited activity of the human mind, while the others deal in multiple levels, so I would guess Newton.

Thus far we have 3 people for Psycho (well almost, since 2 question its 'obviousness' for some reason) and 1 for Principia (based on its age and 'limitation' (although one could argue that the founding principles of calculus and the discovery of the inverse square law of gravitation are not exactly 'limited', and can be considered one of the greatest generalizations ever conceived by a single human mind)).

Come on people. Imagine that you must make this tragic decision. What good reason will you give to select one of these four options? Being "afraid of the shower" is not a good reason.

A clue: This is a difficult decision because it will obliterate a significant human achievement. There's no getting around that. To decide, the question you must pose is: what compels you to choose one over the all the others when forced (imagine a gun is being held to your head by a credible assailant)? The answer, while potentially morally difficult, should in theory be relatively quick to arrive at (which you should do, since otherwise you will be shot).

Hm. I don't mean to change the quiz in mid-stream by introducing a gun to your head. Consider that aspect as part of the clue: it may help you to decide quickly. If it does not, ignore the imaginary gun-to-your-head scenario, and take as long as you like to justify your selection.

the logic of this still escapes me, but put in your extreme pick or die: a work that involves artistic leaps (all but Newton) would be harder to retrieve over time. Newton's "discoveries" were duplicated by others as he lived, so the loss would be temporary. The artistic losses would not necessarily be retrieved. I still say Newton.

And I still say Psycho. The gun to my head makes that choice even easier.

I'm with the Psycho vote. Even if you could argue that Psycho defined the horror genre or suspense movies in general there is no saying that suspense films or horror movies wouldn't come about on their own with a different ignition.

Also, considering how few movies we watch and that human life would continue even if you wiped out *all* movies from history, Psycho is the answer.

because scientific achievement is the benchmark of evolution of the human mind, Newton's achievement was being reached by others at the same time, making any ONE scientific breakthrough less crucial than the entire scientific progress. So if Newton was killed by the apple that hit him, than Leibniz still would have developed calculus and others would have filled in the astronomical holes. Artistic advances, which define a culture, are ot so easily matched. Without a Bob Dylan for example, we would all be that much more illiterate. No one would have filled his shoes. Einstein crystallized work that others would have been forced to discover in the progress of collective scientific achievement, etc...

What's the answer already?

Indeed the answer is B. Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.

Complete article by Humphrey, entitled Scientific Shakespeare, is located here. 1987 was the 300th anniversary of the publication of the Principia.

One thing Humphrey doesn't address is the loss of technique:

"But scientists do care just as much as artists do about the routes taken, and hence would be appalled at the idea of discarding Newton's actual work and just saving the destination (which someone else would eventually have led us to in any case). They care about the actual trajectories because the methods used in them can often be used again, for other journeys...."

-- Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea

But if you had to pick, I would still agree with picking the scientific work on the grounds that the conclusions about the world are still there, waiting to be found.

Very cool stuff, Dave. I like it that you make me think.

I think had it been another movie that I am not disgusted by, I would have approached it differently. But the fact that you forced me to look at Psycho as art (not a horror movie) is good for my brain.

Given enough time (lots and lots of time), can't we say the same thing about art that you are saying about science? (That the masterpieces are there waiting to be created?)

No, we cannot say that.

Consider Shakespeare or Hitchcock or you or me; we are thinking beings that have been partly formed and developed by the conditions we live under (England of the 16th century or England/USA of the 20th & 21st century) and by its culture. To reproduce Psycho would be to reproduce Hitchcock (and his cast and crew), and also to recreate all the circumstances that formed their views/talents/etc. In other words, you cannot do that. Psycho is not a timeless 'Form' or artful 'Truth', any more than Hamlet or the World Trade Center or 'God' or any other product of human design is.

Part of the underlying mission of science is to seek out and understand true things about the universe. But here we are talking about a material 'truth'. We recognize that there are true things outside of our minds which are true whether you are a 17th century poet or a martian or a filmmaker or a guidance counselor. Thing such as "the gravitational attraction between two massive objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them". This is not subject to interpretation, but a directly observable, demonstrable property of the universe. A property which, importantly, will be true whether or not Newton wrote a book about it. Therefore the act of obliterating his book does nothing to the law of gravity.

On the other hand, I cannot see how you would not consider art (or any cultural artifact) as tied intimately with the society that fostered it. Art may express certain true observations about the world in one way or another of course. Art in and of itself, as a product of the human mind, is not intrinsic I wouldn't think; it's not lying in wait for some inspired person to 'discover', whole-hog.

Some people consider aspects of culture to evolve in much the same way as biological things evolve over time (a whole other topic). Being a developed human expression (itself a developed organism), an object of art can be considered an utterly unique one-of-a-kind, an endangered species of 1, and irreplaceable.

the quiz makes a good point about science, but the choices would get hard if you throw in "Capital" for example, a science in another format other than the physical sciences. That was the argument I was waiting for, but it wasn't there. Some day we can argue the objective material forces in society.

A good mind provoking quiz. What do I win?

Would it be that much harder? What about Darwin's Origin of Species? That's a theoretical work, backed by lots of examples in the biological world.

Capital has a political component as well as a theoretical component. Leaving aside the political component, the theory addresses the conditions of production and exchange of capitalism. Are those economic laws actual laws? Why wouldn't they be? How much of a political position is it to argue against the idea of 'surplus value'?

my point is: if you replace Mathematica with Capital the political ramifications of the quiz would take center stage. but yes, the answer would probably be the same, although then we have a value judgment involved : let another 5 or 6 generations drift along before another Marx shows up to summarize the social sciences? I'd rather see Psycho bite the dust.

And everything has a political component or ramification. Everything. Newton was dripping with prejudice, distorted conclusions based on religious prejudice. But the political ramifications of describing a real world undermined that religion. I'm talking about the science of Capital in itself: since it is SOCIAL science, it is wrapped in the political struggle, evolved in the class struggle in fact, so duplicating that would be problematical. The class would eventually generate its own political science, but it doesn't work the same way as physical science. It requires the class movement to become its labratory.

What's my prize?!

If the operation of a social science does not work in the same way as that of a physical science, how do you explain your own example of Newton?

Newton ran up against certain questions which he could not answer, so he concluded "God did it". But everything else he could explain, he did. Which, as you said, had political ramifications.

There are also political ramifications to claiming that different classes in capitalist society have antagonistic goals. That says nothing whatever regarding whether that observation is true or not. If it is a true observation about the state of the social world, how is that more or less problematic than generalizing about the law of gravity?

[Oh, and your prize is $5 million; it will be wired to your account subject to the results of tomorrow's megamillions drawing.]

real social science is the same as physical science in the way that objective laws are discovered. The difference is in the laboratory, so the politics are immediately intertwined with the science. Both rest on the collective discoveries of past generations. Newton could go off to a lab and develop conclusions; the social science lab is the class political movement itself. To know the world is to change the world. But in the strict limits of this quiz, it would be the same.

Psycho because it's the most recent. Therefore, the strain on the chronosynclastic infidibulum would be less.

Newton's and Darwin's discoveries would have been (and were) made by others, but they were well-placed to get their ideas accepted. Wallace figured out natural selection only a decade or so after Darwin (and before Darwin published), but his presentation didn't attract much attention, whereas Origin of Species was widely read and discussed.