4 ms·
> "no one person is truly responsible for progress or breakthroughs, and everyone's contribution matters", which is ridiculous, and the motte is "no man is an i
by ska 5y ago
> "no one person is truly responsible for progress or breakthroughs, and everyone's contribution matters", which is ridiculous, and the motte is "no man is an island, and all breakthroughs rely on the actions of others", which is obviously true.
I think you are missing here the real core of the "Myth of the Lone Genius" argument which is not to claim that lone geniuses don't exist (e.g. Ramanujan, far more than some of these other examples) but rather to reject the argument that progress is mostly made by them, or can be best understood by focusing on them.
The argument boils down to: everyone's contributions are clearly not equivalent, but the vast majority of real progress is a collective effort; and that by focusing on individuals we are less efficient at learning what is effective.
- saimiam 5y agoThe GP comment itself is a motte-Bailey. I’m willing to bet they will settle for some less energetic form of their original argument that the myth of the lone genius is a case of sour grapes.
- HWR_14 5y agoRamanujan is certainly a better example than Newton or Aristotle. There were a lot of geniuses I would highlight over them if I was looking for individual talent.
- username90 5y agoNo, Newton is exceptional. It can be argued that he did more to progress physics and maths than everyone before him combined. He did so many things, but people just say "Oh Leibniz replicated one of the things after having seen the derived works of Newton" and dismiss him after that. Newton started the Calculus of Variations, one of the most powerful methods we have for calculating things. It wasn't until Euler 100 years later that the rest of the world began to properly understand what he did then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_variations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_variations
- HWR_14 5y agoNewton was around (preceded by and followed by) great scientific discovery. Calculus of variations was also worked on by Bernoulli, for instance, who discovered it independently. And Leibniz seems to have as good a claim to being first as Newton does. Newton built heavily on Kepler for both math and the sciences. I'm not saying Newton didn't do great work. He just seems a poor example of a single lone genius. He was brilliant and alive at a time when a lot of exciting changes were coming around. Those combined to make him great. Just not a sole genius.
- sunstone 5y agoSee also Walter Pitts.