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That great discoveries are so often made independently by multiple people when their time has come suggests that if the theory is right, Great Men are a dime a
by firethief 7y ago
That great discoveries are so often made independently by multiple people when their time has come suggests that if the theory is right, Great Men are a dime a dozen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI often wonder if the same applies to business. Maybe Jobs, Gates or Bezos didn't make such an outsized contribution but maybe they were able to concentrate on themselves what other people would have done too. Maybe just a little later or differently. Makes me wonder about Einstein. Were other people working on relativity too?
- zamadatix 7y agoPlenty of people were working on the issues that relativity sought to resolve but I've never heard of any simultaneous discovery of relativity. Many of the other stuff Einstein worked on had multiple "discoveries", I remember reading some about Brownian motion before.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- glitchc 7y agoAbsolutely yes on the Einstein question. Check out Bohr, Lorentz and Poincare to start.
- joycian 7y agoAnd Hilbert actually beat him to the final equation.
- jorgenveisdal 7y agoActually, he didn’t. I looked into it about six months ago. Einstein clearly got there first. Essay: https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-race-to-generalize-relativity-6885f44e3cbe https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-ra...
- oska 7y agoGates and Bezos absolutely dispensable. Both just very aggressive opportunists. Gates actually suffocated innovation, not fostered it. The only one of the three you name where you could make a case for them making a real difference would be Jobs (and I say that even though I am a non-fan).