> as evidenced by Leibniz, it seems like most of it would have happened without him. his work on series was probably not going to happen for a bit without him.

> as evidenced by Leibniz, it seems like most of it would have happened without him. his work on series was probably not going to happen for a bit without him. I think that part of what was marvellous about Newton (Einstein, too) was how many things he did. As you say, it seems plausible any individual thing Newton did would have been done by someone else—probably the same is true of anyone—but it seems unlikely that any one person could have done everything Newton did.