It makes me think of Darwin's journals, where you can see him picking up on useful little tidbits from the stuff he's read and observed. His reading of Malthus

It makes me think of Darwin's journals, where you can see him picking up on useful little tidbits from the stuff he's read and observed. His reading of Malthus was a major influence on his development of natural selection theory, but it's not like Origin of Species is a Malthusian tract. Exposure to other people's thoughts helps create our own thoughts. There's a great many scientists and philosophers who were wrong about things but who provided the structure and patterns necessary for later thinkers. From Plato and Aristotle to Smith, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud...