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> History [..] is full of geniuses who came up with a revolutionary idea largely on their own [...] (Aristotle, Newton, Darwin, Einstein to name the most obviou

by mvaliente2001 5y ago

> History [..] is full of geniuses who came up with a revolutionary idea largely on their own [...] (Aristotle, Newton, Darwin, Einstein to name the most obvious examples). This line has almost the opposite effect than intended in me. Yes, Newton and Darwin were geniuses that came with revolutionary ideas, but on the other hand, for calculus and evolution it seems to have been their time. Leibniz and Alfred Russel Wallace came to the same ideas around the same time.

gota 5y ago
I'm not an expert but I seem recall that other people were working concurrently on related, maybe tangential, questions for most of the other "great ideas" mentioned in the article Didn't Einstein strike such a hit precisely because his (new) approach solved sought after problems? The people who helped define the problem have a large chunk of merit, in my opinion. There's no need for a theory in a vacuum.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Einstein generated multiple original game changing insights across multiple domains. There were people who might have generated one new Einstein insight on their own - Minkowski and Hilbert were both on their way towards GR after SR was presented - but no one else was even remotely likely to have generated all of them.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  IIRC, Einstein's biggest insight was cutting the Gordian Knot that other physicists faced when looking at the universal speed limit of the speed of light. Others tried to work around it. Einstein said "what would I have to do to make that true and keep other physics".
handrous 5y ago
Came here to call out the same selection of examples as really weird for the purpose of making that point. Newton and Darwin for the reasons you cite—and if two arrived at the same breakthrough at almost the same time, does one dare imagine that a dozen or more others weren't damn close, despite the fraction of a percent of the global population had, or has, the upbringing, inclination, and freedom to even approach the problem in the first place? Hell, does one even dare imagine that a thousand nobodies hadn't had the insight that would have led them straight to that breakthrough much sooner if only they'd had the background and environment to recognize it as significant, follow through to prove it, and gain publicity for their discovery? Surely not. Aristotle, well, shit, everyone whose independent work survives from antiquity looks like a lone genius, but that's obviously, in part, because so little survives and because attribution is so sketchy. With Aristotle in particular it's not even clear how much was his work is his, directly, and how much was the work of his "school", developed over years or decades by many people, if we're talking about particular insights or inventions, and not sheer overall-importance of a person. I know less about the environment around Einstein's breakthroughs but given the rest I'd be surprised if the author actually managed to pick a good example, for his purposes.
- myrmidon 5y ago
  Einstein is also a really bad example; there is Hendrik Lorentz for special relativity and David Hilbert for general relativity wo would've probably produced the exact same results maybe some years later had Einstein never existed. In fact, I can not think of a single (!!) scientist that progressed his field in a truly revolutionary manner; every great thinker that comes to mind had contemporaries that could have substituted for them with only minor delays in progress. I fully agree with the author that geniuses exist, it's just that they all were/are replaceable.
  - Strilanc 5y ago
    How much delay do you estimate on the discovery time of Newton's three laws of motion, if Newton was deleted from history? Suppose I told you that you could delete five people born in the 1800s, of your choosing, from history. How much do you think you could delay the general understanding of special relativity?
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Isn't Einstein the poster-boy for the theory that people we regard as a lone genius were actually in constant communication with sub-geniuses we've never heard of that helped him?
  - 52-6F-62 5y ago
    I thought he was more held up as an archetype of the "strange" ones who people misunderstand at first, but end up contributing in a large way. That's why he was plastered on classrooms and his image used in anti-bullying campaigns in the 90's. Of course, in those he was always stood out alone but probably more for the convenience of a simple message for children/mass consumption.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Some of his appeal to pedagogy had to do with pure myth-making surrounding him, like the "Einstein failed math, so don't worry, lone kid in your class still struggling with long division, you may yet be a math genius, so don't give up!" stuff that was such a large part of how he was presented for a long time (may still be, as far as kids in school are concerned). There's a lot of "everyman who just tried hard and made it big" stuff about his biography that's, at best, disingenuously contextualized, yet is plausibly most of his presence in the popular imagination and in pop culture.
zozbot234 5y ago
Wasn't it Newton himself who said: "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"? Looks like a pretty strong rebuttal of the "lone genius" POV.
- PopsiclePete 5y ago
  And yet - why are so few others capable of standing on the shoulders of said giants? Here I am, with more giants' shoulders to stand on, if I wished it, with easy access to vast wealth of information that Newton (or someone living in the 1980's) couldn't even dream of - and yet - my contributions to calculus are precisely zero. I studied drumming for 6 years and could easily be outmatched (and have been) skill-wise by a 5-year-old with talent. Are there just no "geniuses" at all? Could anyone paint the Sistine Chapel? Carve out David? Paint the Mona Lisa? Play drums for Led Zeppelin? Invent new fields in mathematics? Is 99.9999% of humanity just ... what? lazy?
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    back in Newton's era there was less competition and the intellectual barriers to entry were lower. Knowing calculus was enough to be a genius. now you need to invent a new type of math. Things have become so much harder that in many instances outside help is necessary. But it also makes genius more necessary too. It just means more help and having more genius.
    - PopsiclePete 5y ago
      There was less competition but it was also tremendously difficult to even see what others are doing, or to learn from them, or to even talk to them....just being in possession of scientific texts was enough to get you killed not too long before Newton's time. That makes his accomplishments more impressive to me, not less. Here's an analogy. I'd be more impressed by a medieval European serf if that serf could create the Intel 8086 than by you if you designed the next AMD 32-core processor.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
username90 5y ago
Newton didn't just do calculus, he also structured the laws of physics. And it is pretty likely that Leibniz discovered calculus by working backwards from Netwons laws of physics, since if you have the laws of movement clearly shown like that then discovering calculus is a lot easier. Note that Newton created calculus in his quest to do the laws of motion, so he didn't publish it. Edit: Also Newton discovered the calculus of variations and applied it to a bunch of problems, can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_minimal_resistance_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_minimal_resistance_... It is the basis for almost all graduate level physics courses we have today and is way beyond regular calculus. Would likely have taken a few hundred years before it was discovered without Newton.
Xelbair 5y ago
An idea of calculus was already found in ancient Greece. Archimedes used it to calculate the area of parabola by assigning a 'weight' to a line, and using a leverage to balance it. There is a good Numberphile YT about it called 'Parabolas and Archimedes'

gota 5y ago

I'm not an expert but I seem recall that other people were working concurrently on related, maybe tangential, questions for most of the other "great ideas" mentioned in the article Didn't Einstein strike such a hit precisely because his (new) approach solved sought after problems? The people who helped define the problem have a large chunk of merit, in my opinion. There's no need for a theory in a vacuum.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Einstein generated multiple original game changing insights across multiple domains. There were people who might have generated one new Einstein insight on their own - Minkowski and Hilbert were both on their way towards GR after SR was presented - but no one else was even remotely likely to have generated all of them.
HWR_14 5y ago
IIRC, Einstein's biggest insight was cutting the Gordian Knot that other physicists faced when looking at the universal speed limit of the speed of light. Others tried to work around it. Einstein said "what would I have to do to make that true and keep other physics".

handrous 5y ago

Came here to call out the same selection of examples as really weird for the purpose of making that point. Newton and Darwin for the reasons you cite—and if two arrived at the same breakthrough at almost the same time, does one dare imagine that a dozen or more others weren't damn close, despite the fraction of a percent of the global population had, or has, the upbringing, inclination, and freedom to even approach the problem in the first place? Hell, does one even dare imagine that a thousand nobodies hadn't had the insight that would have led them straight to that breakthrough much sooner if only they'd had the background and environment to recognize it as significant, follow through to prove it, and gain publicity for their discovery? Surely not. Aristotle, well, shit, everyone whose independent work survives from antiquity looks like a lone genius, but that's obviously, in part, because so little survives and because attribution is so sketchy. With Aristotle in particular it's not even clear how much was his work is his, directly, and how much was the work of his "school", developed over years or decades by many people, if we're talking about particular insights or inventions, and not sheer overall-importance of a person. I know less about the environment around Einstein's breakthroughs but given the rest I'd be surprised if the author actually managed to pick a good example, for his purposes.

myrmidon 5y ago
Einstein is also a really bad example; there is Hendrik Lorentz for special relativity and David Hilbert for general relativity wo would've probably produced the exact same results maybe some years later had Einstein never existed. In fact, I can not think of a single (!!) scientist that progressed his field in a truly revolutionary manner; every great thinker that comes to mind had contemporaries that could have substituted for them with only minor delays in progress. I fully agree with the author that geniuses exist, it's just that they all were/are replaceable.
- Strilanc 5y ago
  How much delay do you estimate on the discovery time of Newton's three laws of motion, if Newton was deleted from history? Suppose I told you that you could delete five people born in the 1800s, of your choosing, from history. How much do you think you could delay the general understanding of special relativity?
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Isn't Einstein the poster-boy for the theory that people we regard as a lone genius were actually in constant communication with sub-geniuses we've never heard of that helped him?
- 52-6F-62 5y ago
  I thought he was more held up as an archetype of the "strange" ones who people misunderstand at first, but end up contributing in a large way. That's why he was plastered on classrooms and his image used in anti-bullying campaigns in the 90's. Of course, in those he was always stood out alone but probably more for the convenience of a simple message for children/mass consumption.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Some of his appeal to pedagogy had to do with pure myth-making surrounding him, like the "Einstein failed math, so don't worry, lone kid in your class still struggling with long division, you may yet be a math genius, so don't give up!" stuff that was such a large part of how he was presented for a long time (may still be, as far as kids in school are concerned). There's a lot of "everyman who just tried hard and made it big" stuff about his biography that's, at best, disingenuously contextualized, yet is plausibly most of his presence in the popular imagination and in pop culture.

zozbot234 5y ago

Wasn't it Newton himself who said: "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"? Looks like a pretty strong rebuttal of the "lone genius" POV.

PopsiclePete 5y ago
And yet - why are so few others capable of standing on the shoulders of said giants? Here I am, with more giants' shoulders to stand on, if I wished it, with easy access to vast wealth of information that Newton (or someone living in the 1980's) couldn't even dream of - and yet - my contributions to calculus are precisely zero. I studied drumming for 6 years and could easily be outmatched (and have been) skill-wise by a 5-year-old with talent. Are there just no "geniuses" at all? Could anyone paint the Sistine Chapel? Carve out David? Paint the Mona Lisa? Play drums for Led Zeppelin? Invent new fields in mathematics? Is 99.9999% of humanity just ... what? lazy?
- paulpauper 5y ago
  back in Newton's era there was less competition and the intellectual barriers to entry were lower. Knowing calculus was enough to be a genius. now you need to invent a new type of math. Things have become so much harder that in many instances outside help is necessary. But it also makes genius more necessary too. It just means more help and having more genius.
  - PopsiclePete 5y ago
    There was less competition but it was also tremendously difficult to even see what others are doing, or to learn from them, or to even talk to them....just being in possession of scientific texts was enough to get you killed not too long before Newton's time. That makes his accomplishments more impressive to me, not less. Here's an analogy. I'd be more impressed by a medieval European serf if that serf could create the Intel 8086 than by you if you designed the next AMD 32-core processor.
nickthemagicman 5y ago

username90 5y ago

Newton didn't just do calculus, he also structured the laws of physics. And it is pretty likely that Leibniz discovered calculus by working backwards from Netwons laws of physics, since if you have the laws of movement clearly shown like that then discovering calculus is a lot easier. Note that Newton created calculus in his quest to do the laws of motion, so he didn't publish it. Edit: Also Newton discovered the calculus of variations and applied it to a bunch of problems, can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_minimal_resistance_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_minimal_resistance_... It is the basis for almost all graduate level physics courses we have today and is way beyond regular calculus. Would likely have taken a few hundred years before it was discovered without Newton.

Xelbair 5y ago

An idea of calculus was already found in ancient Greece. Archimedes used it to calculate the area of parabola by assigning a 'weight' to a line, and using a leverage to balance it. There is a good Numberphile YT about it called 'Parabolas and Archimedes'