I used to think like this until I actually spent some time with the modern things after learning a lot of the historical development paths. A lot of research is

I used to think like this until I actually spent some time with the modern things after learning a lot of the historical development paths. A lot of research is stitching together disparate ideas that have developed in their own little community silos. The best skills you can learn as a researcher are to appreciate, recognize (non-surface level) similarities between, and how to synthesize existing research. There's an awful lot of cult of the new that goes on in modern research.