Who has contributed more to Civilization: Italians, or French?

[Benyzero]

Italians invented pizza.. vote is clear.

[MinervaItalica]

Speaking pragmatically, the French invented bidet

Yes, but strangely they don't use it.

[Kivan]

Both in equal measure.

[gıulıoımpa]

I think the term "french revolution" ends with everything else. That has changed all the world and created a new era in Europe, Italy isn't Italy but a lot of micro kingdoms in the same period.

But both nations gave big contributions and great minds to the world.

but it is also true that the French kings genocided and eradicated local culture in French territory to create France. Italians valued local governement and democracy like the ancient greeks did a millenium and a half before.

This way we preserved regional identity even though the concept of Italy was already present( Expanded from the roman Concept of below the Po river and now encompassing all the peninsula until the alps like Petrarca says) but nobody wanted to sacrifice democracy.

Petrarca , 1300s :

Ben provide Natura al nostro stato,
quando de l’Alpi schermo
pose fra noi et la tedesca rabbia


good nature well provided our state when it created the Alps,
a barrier between us and the German Rage



then he criticized the short mindness of italian powers (as you said)

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Both.

Italy was more influential during Classical antiquity and Renaissance.

France was more influential during Late Modern and Contemporary History.

[renaissance12]

I agree with you but think you're a bit downplaying Italians achievements. It's mostly Anglo-saxons and other Germanics that love to downplay southern european achivements(even France included) so don't be like them.

You can't ignore influential Italians in history such as Christopher Coloumbus, Gallileo Galilei, Napoleon Bonaparte, Enrico Fermi, Alessandro Volta, Da Vinci etc. Overall I agree French wipe the floor with Italins(especially when it comes to Science and Technology) but to say that Italy produced virtually nothing is wrong.

Italians renaissance mathematicians were responsible for the most important developments in algebra since Babylonians-Mesopotamia.
In simple words.. for hundreds and hundreds of years there has been no significant progress in algebra.... till Italian renaissance mathematicians... who paved also the road to French De Scartes Pascal and later Newton and Leibniz..

The cultural, intellectual and artistic movement of the Renaissance, which saw a resurgence of learning based on classical sources ( Romans and Greek ), began in Italy around the 14th Century, and gradually spread across most of Europe over the next 3 centuries.
Science and art were still very much interconnected and intermingled at this time, as exemplified by the work of artist/scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci ( one of the best mathematicians in his time ), and it is no surprise that, just as in art, revolutionary work in the fields of philosophy and science was soon taking place.
In the Renaissance Italy of the early 16th Century, Bologna University in particular was famed for its intense public mathematics competitions.
It was in just such a competion that the unlikely figure of the young, self-taught Tartaglia Nicolò revealed to the world the formula for solving first one type, and later all types, of cubic equations (equations with terms including x3), an achievement hitherto considered impossible and which had stumped the best mathematicians of China, India and Islamic world.


Italian renaissance mathematicians such as Gerolamo Cardano ( "invention" of complex numbers, discovery of cubic formula equations together with Tartaglia ) Raphael Bombelli, Del Ferro, were responsible for the most important developments in algebra since Babylonians ( Indians invented decimal number but their "algebra" was, in some way, inferior to Archimedes's mathematics.. ..who was able to find the formula of parabolic area using Romans number ).


With Hindu-Arabic numerals, standardized notation and the new language of algebra at their disposal, the stage was set for the European mathematical revolution of the 15-16 th Century in Italy and 16-17 th century in Italy and France England and Germany....and later in Switzerland..


In simple words... DeScartes library was full of mathematic books of Italian mathematicians...

Gerolamo Cardano Library had no mathematic book of any european mathematicians ( but Fibonacci.. Italian )


Father Eugenio Barsanti (Italy 12 October 1821 – 19 April 1864), also named Nicolò, was an Italian engineer, who together with Felice Matteucci of Florence invented the first version of the internal combustion engine in 1853. Their patent request was granted in London on June 12, 1854, and published in London's Morning Journal under the title "Specification of Eugene Barsanti and Felix Matteucci, Obtaining Motive Power by the Explosion of Gasses", as documented by the Fondazione Barsanti e Matteucci

In 1877, Enrico Forlanini developed an early helicopter powered by a steam engine. It was the first of its type that rose to a height of 13 meters, where it remained for some 20 seconds, after a vertical take-off from a park in Milan

Simple words: the first Flying helicopter was built by an Italian..Enrico Forlanini

Galileo Ferraris (31 October 1847 – 7 February 1897) was an Italian physicist and electrical engineer, one of the pioneers of AC power system and an inventor of the first three-phase induction motor ( Tesla arrived later )...

In 2002, 113 years after his death, the Washington House proclaimed Italian Meucci ( and not Bell ) "the inventor of the phone."