The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened only once, in one place i disagree with this premise based on kevin kelly's simultaneou

The invention of the wheel was so challenging that it probably happened only once, in one place i disagree with this premise based on kevin kelly's simultaneous discovery phenomenon. The fact that pretty well every invention and discovery you mention has occurred to two different people at possibly the same time. Possibly three. Possibly four. My favorite example of this is the light bulb, which in my part of the world a man named Joseph Swan gets the credit for inventing the light bulb and a terrible fraud called Thomas Edison came along and ripped him off. Well, if I live in Russia, I give the credit to Lodygin, and I'm equally cross with Edison. But actually if you drill down into history, in the 18th century there are 23 people in that decade alone who deserve independent credit for coming up with the idea of the incandescent light bulb. It was an idea ripe to be discovered. It was inevitable that it would be discovered in that decade. And that's true of almost everything. And then of course famously evolution itself, the idea of natural selection occurs to Wallace and Darwin at the same time, and Darwin has to rush into print to prevent himself being preempted. Even relativity--we tend to think of Einstein as unique in coming up with this idea that nobody else, that it took the world by surprise and nobody believed him. Well, that's true, but if you look at what Hendrik Lorentz was doing at the same time, he was well on the trail. He would have got there if Einstein had been run over by a tram. The double helix of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), incredibly important discovery--big race going on to find it. That, the technology had reached the point where we're going to find the genetic code around that time. So, there's a sort of complete dispensability of scientists and inventors that really surprises people when you think about it. [0] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/02/matt_ridley_on_1.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/02/matt_ridley_on_1.ht...