Ancient autists

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Jokes aside, which historical people do you think displayed autistic traits?

I find this one particularly interesting (a tomboyish female queen):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden

Archimedes

Socrates

Why Socrates?

He (according to Plato) advocated the Socratic method--which involves being quite social with each other.

The glory of the ancient geeks?

Maybe Pythagoras.

His home was stormed by a Roman soldier when the city fell to the Romans. He told the intruder not to bother him until the geometrician finished solving his dodecahedron problem. The soldier hacked him to death with his sword. Most NTs, even mathematicians, back then would have had the street smarts not to brush off an angry Roman soldier like that. Oh well.

You cant really diagnose anyone in the past.

But besides Pythagoras there arent many figures that we know enough about personally to even suspect that they were even strong contenders to be aspies until we get to Isaac Newton in the late 1600's.

If everyday socializing took the form of Socratic inquiry I wouldn't shun it.

In Phaedrus Socrates excuses himself from learning about things that don't interest him on the basis that he doesn't yet know himself well enough to bother trying to know about anything else. That strikes me as autistic in the literal, non-diagnostic sense.

I think a strong case could also be made for Diogenes the Cynic being autistic.

How ancient are we talking about? If you're only going for historical, then I'm thinking about Nikola Tesla. He was obsessed with electricity and defied conventional ideas in favor of his own method. He struggled to convey his ideas to the general public in social arenas, preferring to conduct (puns!) live demonstrations.

When his ideas were not financially viable due to his intellectual property stakes, he gave up his rights to further his creations (I'm omitting/glossing over a LOT of details here for the sake of brevity).

This was a time when the likes of Thomas Edison and JP Morgan and other tycoons were becoming fabulously wealthy from the burgeoning electric empires. He was mostly motivated by intrinsic drives instead of societal motivators.

Maybe...

But he sat around amongst people, and engaged in dialogue without much trouble. He had students (like Plato). He might have been a political maverick. I don't see Aspie in him, though. I see "somewhat reserved philosopher--who, nevertheless, would not sell out to government interests."

Picture it.. two aspies sitting down talking about a shared special interest without the distraction of NT socializing detritus getting in the way.

It didn't happen that way in the case of Socrates. He always had NT students surrounding him.

God.

For the idea the deity was autistic: Mostly alone. Did things by command not by consensus, Sense of Justice, said to invent sensory

Against: If he made man in his own image he was 98% NT. Multitasking and Executive Functioning abilities are well Godlike

Thoth and Seshat.

Because I said so and because it is true.

The other gods were social while Thoth did the math and made books.

People were confused about the magic. They were simply not ready for physics and chemistry.

Maybe some of the scribes in a place like Sumer were autistic in some sense.

There is an odd figure in British History called Jeremy Bentham who was a philosopher, famous for his ideas of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. He even tried to invent a system to measure happiness with units of "felicitude".

His ideas influenced odd things, like prison design.

The man was thorough and saw his obsessions through - I remember being told in a lecture that not only was he obsessed with reforming the way people voted, he took great care over ideas of the design of the ballot box as well. This going into detail of the parts of things could be an autistic trait.

He's a very interesting character to read about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham

From wikipedia " . . . study by Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran argues that he may have had Asperger's Syndrome"

Last edited by Alexanderplatz on 23 Mar 2015, 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've studied Bentham.

I wish his ideas about population were invalid--but they were, actually, pretty valid.

I'd have to read a biography of him in order to determine "possible" autism--since it really is difficult to diagnosed someone retrospectively.

I remember that John Fowles called Bentham a crypto fascist, and I find there is something chillingly cold about Bentham.

That panopticon idea is pretty nasty, this whole idea of the society of the observed doesn't seem very British. Had he a French influence on his thinking?

Yes, have agreement with you, Asperger's can be difficult to diagnose when experts have the actual person on the slide in front of them, let alone with History in the way.

I remember in the 1980's Beethoven was often spoken of as possibly being bipolar, now he's a candidate for ASD, and this will probably change again with the DSM.

Last edited by Alexanderplatz on 23 Mar 2015, 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.