Hobbes (not his political work), because he went where Descartes should have, and concluded what the rest of his peers were too cowardly to conclude: A godless world where matter can think without the midwife of deity to give birth to spirit, for men to sweep the unexplained underneath. Where not man per-se, but thinking things, were the measure of all things. It was an idea that had been thought before, but never as clearly or as audaciously as Hobbes did.

Kepler and Bacon. The former for his ecstasy in empirical discovery, his glacial patience, his meticulous attention to detail. The later for his much maligned, misunderstood and vilified novum organon.

Platos Socrates- he was da fu&in man.

Heraclitus, for planting the seeds that would take thousands of years to mature.

Heidegger, for bending my brain pat the breaking point. For kicking until something broke.

Goedel and Turing for showing the hard limits of the light of mathematics and logic, but in defining the boundaries, showing how infinite the elysian field is. For building a science that isn't about whats knowable, isn't about whats known, whats been or what will be. Isn't about (properly) thought. But what could be answered and what can't, and what you can and can't even try to answer.

Frege for making sense of the mess, and Russell for showing us that it was still a mess.

Herb Simon, for showing me in person.

Locke, Rousseau, Franklin, Jefferson, the countless soldiers of the enlightenment and others who resurrected the nearly dead ideas of individuality and rule by consensus of the ruled.

the Greeks and all the European pagans who sheltered the flame of (Real) Love, Individualism and Democracy against the darkness of the wackos from the fertile crescent and their nutball religion(s), for later generations to rediscover.

And all the thinkers who came before me and took up the arms of reason to dispel the demons and end the demon haunted world.