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I sort of agree that won't get as many unconventional thinkers in a rigid system, but that only goes so far. You can't control the number of Einsteins you get a

I sort of agree that won't get as many unconventional thinkers in a rigid system, but that only goes so far. You can't control the number of Einsteins you get anyway (exactly one so far), but you can get a lot out of training a ton of people to make steady, incremental progress while you hope for another once in a century genius to come around. You also need people to actually understand the theories and run experiments to validate the work of your geniuses, not to mention build things with them and even extend them. And, of course, Einstein didn't work in a vacuum either, so you can't entirely pretend the legions of lesser, hidebound physicists around didn't pave the way for him to emerge.

newsbinator 5y ago
Who are the Einsteins in other fields? (i.e. people who discover stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been discovered for generations)
- avmich 5y ago
  There are many great researches, but "who discover stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been discovered for generations"... Aristotle (as a long-standing basis for pre-sciences) and a plethora of ancient scientists (Archimedes... Democritus...), Newton (who, of course, stood on the shoulders of Galilei, among others, but still saw far)... By the way, special relativity could - speculatively - be discovered relatively soon by somebody else, at least such an opinion is rather well known and some support. General relativity was a focus of work of David Hilbert - it maybe less clear, but it could also be discovered within decades. Photoelectric effect and quantum phenomena (ER bridge...) maybe less well known, but at least solutions of GR equations started to appear rather early. So even Einstein maybe not that unique.
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    > stood on the shoulders of Galilei Why Galilei and not Kepler?Newton obviously derived the law of gravity from Kepler's laws. Kepler was an absolute giant, and his contribution would not have been possible without Tycho Brahe, another giant. We will never know who the "giants" were, or maybe it was just a pure expression of modesty, but if there were some, I think they were Kepler and Brahe, not Galilei.
    - avmich 5y ago
      I think - just an opinion - both Newton and Galilei thought about higher level things than Kepler and Brahe, more general - be that "basic principle of relativity" or general motion of matter. I'd like to listen to science historians on this matter.

newsbinator 5y ago

Who are the Einsteins in other fields? (i.e. people who discover stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been discovered for generations)

avmich 5y ago
There are many great researches, but "who discover stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been discovered for generations"... Aristotle (as a long-standing basis for pre-sciences) and a plethora of ancient scientists (Archimedes... Democritus...), Newton (who, of course, stood on the shoulders of Galilei, among others, but still saw far)... By the way, special relativity could - speculatively - be discovered relatively soon by somebody else, at least such an opinion is rather well known and some support. General relativity was a focus of work of David Hilbert - it maybe less clear, but it could also be discovered within decades. Photoelectric effect and quantum phenomena (ER bridge...) maybe less well known, but at least solutions of GR equations started to appear rather early. So even Einstein maybe not that unique.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  > stood on the shoulders of Galilei Why Galilei and not Kepler?Newton obviously derived the law of gravity from Kepler's laws. Kepler was an absolute giant, and his contribution would not have been possible without Tycho Brahe, another giant. We will never know who the "giants" were, or maybe it was just a pure expression of modesty, but if there were some, I think they were Kepler and Brahe, not Galilei.
  - avmich 5y ago
    I think - just an opinion - both Newton and Galilei thought about higher level things than Kepler and Brahe, more general - be that "basic principle of relativity" or general motion of matter. I'd like to listen to science historians on this matter.