On: Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī -- Medieval Islamic Scientist, quite a read...

[michael_dorfman]

A real renaissance man, avant la lettre.

[fiaz → michael_dorfman]

You could say that he was a hacker ;)

This notion of course goes against the mainstream interpretation of the hacker persona (the geeky, socially recluse male that is more familiar with computers than he is with his own body). But if you peruse the articles here at Hacker News, it encompasses a very diverse range of subjects (anything from health, math, science, business, charisma, etc.) that are not doubt, interesting to hackers.

I would go a step further and say that what hackers today have in common with Bīrūnī is that the diverse subjects he was most interested in were somehow overlapping with one another.

[jfarmer → fiaz]

"You could say that he was a hacker ;)"

You could, but that would sound really narcissistic.

[wynand → jfarmer]

"You could say that he was like me" would be narcissistic.

Membership of a category does not imply the greatness of other members of that category.

Germans might be proud of Goethe, but only a misguided German would take that to imply his or her own greatness.

[gdee → wynand]

An inverse stereotype. Poor stereotypes then, common or inverse... always wrong. ;)