The Last Supper as created by Leonardo da Vinci:
The Last Supper was the final meal that, according to Christian belief, Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este. This is supposed to be the moment when Jesus, in the words of John says "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me". The picture shows the reaction of the disciples to this as told in the Gospel of John 13:21.
Leonardo da Vinci was already a well-known artist when he created his masterpiece The Last Supper. He painted The Last Supper on the back wall of the dining hall at the Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie in Italy. The reason this painting is laid out the way it is that Leonardo was trying to "extend the room", to make it look like Jesus and his apostles were sitting at the end of the dining hall.
The Last Supper depicts the very moment that Jesus has said to his disciples:
Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.
And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?
And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.
--Matthew 26
In this painting the disciples are all reacting in repulsion to the consideration that someone at that table would betray their master.
Jesus also mentioned to Peter that night that the before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice .
Mark 14:30
30 And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice
Who's in It?
Bartholomew, James Minor and Andrew form a group of three. All are aghast, Andrew to the point of holding his hands up in a "stop!" gesture.
Judas, Peter and John form the next group of three. Judas, you will note, has his face in shadow and is clutching a small bag (of silver?). Peter is visibly angry and a feminine-looking John seems about to swoon.
Christ is the calm in the midst of the storm.
Thomas, James Major and Philip are next. Thomas is clearly agitated, James Major stunned and Philip seems to be seeking clarification.
Matthew, Thaddeus and Simon comprise the last group of three figures. It appears that, when a situation turns ugly, Simon is the "go to" guy for explanations.
Iqbal Latif: In this contemporary age The Last Supper of the age of reason and knowledge should be more like this:
Who's in It? The Last Supper of the age of reason : Galileo Galilei, Marie Curie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Thomas Edison, Aristotle, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.
Iqbal Latif: Public choice! Who should be invited for the 'Supper' and who should be dis-invited to 'The Last Supper of the Scientists?' I also added who should take the place of Jesus of the age of knowledge, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton or Archimedes( if he was from the age of reason, he would take the centre stage in all times great minds )? And who should be the Judas of the age of reason?
Some think that Sagan and Dawkins are popularisers of science but not serious scientists, though Sagan was a highly-published astrophysicist well before he became a “populariser. Some notable exceptions are Neil Bohr, Heisenberg, Watson, Crick, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe. The painting will be more representative if Nikola Tesla replaces Thomas Edison, Richard Feynman replaces Neil Tyson and I would definitely add Copernicus to 'The Last Supper' instead of Richard Dawkins.
Iqbal Latif: @ Newton carrying the flag for mathematics all by himself? Where are the mathematicians!
It could be a close call between Euclid , Pythagoras of Samos, Wilhelm Leibniz, or René Descartes. Alongside Newton and Leibniz, Descartes helped provide the foundations of modern calculus following on the footsteps of Archimedes (which Newton and Leibniz later built upon). Euclid is credited with the instruction of the rigorous, logical proof for theorems and conjectures.
Others are Gauss the Prince, if he was the prince, Euler would be the King. Living from 1707 to 1783, he is regarded as the greatest mathematician to have ever walked this planet. It is said that all mathematical formulas are named after the next person after Euler to discover them. In his day he was ground-breaking and on par with Einstein in genius.
The only currently living mathematician that could be on this list is Andrew Wiles, most well known for his proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem: That no positive integers, a, b and c can satisfy the equation a^n+b^n=c^n For n greater then 2. (If n=2 it is the Pythagoras Formula).
I would suggest René Descartes or Andrew Wiles in place of Sagan. I would also like to replace in the seat of 'Jesus' of reason and logic Albert Einstein by Isaac Newton.
Iqbal Latif: One I overlooked as a mathematician for introducing zero and father of algebra would be Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, transliterated as Algoritmi or Algaurizin, (c. 780, Khwārizm – c. 850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer, a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. From his most important book, Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah , comes the word algebra. Diophantus is sometimes called "the father of Algebra," but this title more appropriately belongs to al-Khwarizmi. "
Algebra" is derived from al-jabr, one of the two operations he used to solve quadratic equations. Algorism and algorithm stem from Algoritmi, the Latin form of his name. Al-Khwarizmi's work is on a more elementary and rhetorical level than that of Diophantus. Al-jabr comes closer to elementary algebra of today than the works of either Diophantus or Brahmagupta.
The word al-jabr presumably meant something like "restoration" or "completion" and seems to refer to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation; the word muqabalah is said to refer to "reduction" or "balancing"-- that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equations or the simplification of the resulting expression (Boyer,228). I think he merits strong credentials to be invited to the supper. He may be qualified to take the place of Judas as an infidel.
Elizabeth Jones: Turing? Rutherford? Remove Sagan and Dawkins for total lack of charm.
Rehan Latif: This is an amazing exercise, how tempting to bring together the greatest minds through the generations for an explosive tete a tete. Given the adage that genius tends to be stubborn, it would be fascinating to see what would sort of conversations would have been going through.
I can imagine Sagan talking about the fact that the Earth is round, and how many billions of planets are out there, and Gallileo banging the table in triumph and shouting out I knew it! I think given Aristotle's magnitude of learning, he would not have been too put off by his mistake and perhaps on the back of what he gleaned from these conversations from those in the future. I would have replaced Dawkins and perhaps Edison for Pythogras and Al Khwarizm, both mathematicians par excellence.
I feel in these dinners one would invite those with strong mathematical backgrounds, for given the impediment of communication (They are all divided between different continents and different centuries!); maths would have been the common language.
Iqbal Latif : @ I feel in these dinners one would invite those with strong mathematical backgrounds, for given the impediment of communication (they are all divided between different continents and different centuries!), maths would have been the common...
Iqbal Latif: @ I would have replaced Dawkins and perhaps Edison for Pythogras and Al Khwarizm, both mathematicians par excellence.
I would not include Pythagoras if this is true, but how can we know that? http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=66880252560&set=a.57376312560.55885.609732560&type=3&theater
Iqbal Latif http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150208456662561&set=a.57376312560.55885.609732560&type=3&theater
"The hand is the cutting edge of the mind ... The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is pleasure in his own skill."
by: Iqbal Latif