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> Very few individuals are responsible for key advancements of civilization. Is this true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and_scienti

> Very few individuals are responsible for key advancements of civilization. Is this true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and_scientific_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and... Another example is the Finnish education system aiming to raise the floor instead of increasing the ceiling. I can think of counterexamples in Hungarian mathematicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) A lot of them knew each other growing up, but you could argue they would've succeeded anywhere. If this question were more carefully explored I think it'd do a lot for the author's argument as a whole.

hervature 5y ago
This is exactly the argumentation I would love to see as well. It would be very interesting to compare scientific achievement coming out of Finland compared to, say, Alabama which is the first state to cross 5M people and thus comparable in population. Of course, I'm sure that analysis would be plagued by what subjectively counts as achievement. Also, I was loose with my words. I didn't really mean few as in you could actually count the individuals. I meant more along the lines of the 1% of the population that has a PhD and at least making some minor contribution to academia.