Greatest Ever Scot Revisited

[Chirs]

This is an interesting conversation, if I may join. I am going to side with Iain on this one. I understand and absolutely agree with Jimmy's position but I would say that a life well-lived is of the greater importance. I am glad we have the opportunity to live at all, and Fleming has gone a long way to helping that, but the logical extension of that argument would venerate anyone who has promoted the live we are currently living. Is this really the best we could do?

Consider: there is no way to know how Europeans would have coped with infection had penicillin not been invented. Is it the best solution possible? There's no way to know that, and there's no way to know how things would have gone without it. However, we can say with certainty that it is not the only way to deal with infection because the rest of the world was getting on fine before the discovery.

In my opinion, the quality of a person's actions determines their life. Fleming's actions are laudable and have allowed people to stay alive; Burns works encourage people to truly live. The argument is close: "If you weren't alive you wouldn't be reading Burns." Both are valuable but, all else being equal, I would say that being alive is not enough, I want to be inspired. Fleming has certainly help me live but Burns has helped to shape the quality of the actions of people's lives.

[Jimmy]

This is an interesting conversation, if I may join. I am going to side with Iain on this one. I understand and absolutely agree with Jimmy's position but I would say that a life well-lived is of the greater importance. I am glad we have the opportunity to live at all, and Fleming has gone a long way to helping that, but the logical extension of that argument would venerate anyone who has promoted the live we are currently living. Is this really the best we could do?

Consider: there is no way to know how Europeans would have coped with infection had penicillin not been invented. Is it the best solution possible? There's no way to know that, and there's no way to know how things would have gone without it. However, we can say with certainty that it is not the only way to deal with infection because the rest of the world was getting on fine before the discovery.

In my opinion, the quality of a person's actions determines their life. Fleming's actions are laudable and have allowed people to stay alive; Burns works encourage people to truly live. The argument is close: "If you weren't alive you wouldn't be reading Burns." Both are valuable but, all else being equal, I would say that being alive is not enough, I want to be inspired. Fleming has certainly help me live but Burns has helped to shape the quality of the actions of people's lives.

'A life well lived is of greater importance' Certainly, the life of Burns has been well documented and recorded and has been studied by many scholars. Sure Burns led a life well lived,he was typical of many great Scots past and present who held genius in their own particular field whether in the Arts, Sciences, Sport or whatever but less recorded was the life of Alexander Fleming, less of a microscope has been placed in his personal life to find out more about him, all we really know about him was that he was a great man of science but equally was that a life well lived?

Without penicillin, how would society have evolved since the war, Fleming's discovery changed history, helped win and fight wars. Has any other anti-infection procedure made such inroads into disease.
How was TB and consumption dealt with before penicillin and its future pharmaceutical offsprings? the answer is is was'nt dealt with.

When I read Burns I am inspired and want to be at the level of humanity that he advocates, when I read about Fleming, I am humbled that man can take on natures worse diseases and defeat them, giving hope and inspiration for the conquering of other plagues and diseases