
The Great Man Paradox - Petiver
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/the-great-man-paradox/
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jessriedel
Bell's Theorem has (correctly in my opinion) been called the most profound
discovery of science.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem)

It is our most precise characterization about what's weird about quantum
mechanics. John Bell had no competitors and his work (1964) went unappreciated
for a very long time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell)

Without him, it is very likely his theorem would have remained undiscovered
for many decades. At the least, we would have waited for quantum information
theory to pick up steam in late '80s and early '90s (and I don't have a good
sense the degree to which he contributed to that).

Ultimately no one is irreplaceable in science, but Bell arguably came as close
as is possible in the modern era. The best argument against lionizing great
men like him is that the property that makes them great -- a lone discovery
unlikely to be made without them -- also means their work is often in an
unpopular area and so has little impact...until the area gets so popular that
it would have been discovered anyways!

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thanatropism
I would add Noether's theorem.

In essence, Noether's theorem re-founds physics on an axiomatic basis.

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Upvoter33
I think a lot of "great man" thinking is really motivational - people want to
believe they can make a dent in this massive universe of ours. If we always
said "well, progress happens, regardless of what you specifically do", that is
pretty depressing and may actually lead to fewer people trying to push things
forward. just a thought -

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geofft
But I'm _more_ likely to believe I can make a dent in the universe if I
believe that Einstein was just one of many possible great men (or women) who
could have done what he did. I don't believe that I, personally, am a "great
man" on the order of Einstein, so a "great man" theory like presented would
convince me to not even try.

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technobabble
To piggyback off of this comment; in bleeding-edge research, one needs a
degree of creativity in order to (a) try new things, and (b) have a greater
willingness to roll with failure. For me personally, knowing I that "great
men" constantly make simple mistakes, have bias and egos that they need to
keep in check, and are struggling with other scientist, lifts weight off of my
chest.

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geofft
The given answer to the paradox seems sort of like constructing a rationale
after the fact to keep the status of Einstein and Newton and Galileo as unique
"great men". But why do we need to keep it?

Is it hard to acknowledge that the three of them were certainly great
scientists, but many other people in the world could have done what they did
were it not for fortune? Is there a limited capacity for greatness in the
world?

Does it diminish Einstein's _accomplishments_ to say that other people could
have done what he did and achieved the same things he did, but that he was the
one who happened to do it? The research was still incredibly important and the
impact on human knowledge and on society was still massive; it doesn't get
less impactful because other people could have done it too.

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stupidcar
"Does it diminish Einstein's accomplishments to say that other people could
have done what he did and achieved the same things he did, but that he was the
one who happened to do it?"

Well, yes it does. That's the paradox. Greatness must surely be, no pun
intended, _relative_ to something. If other people not only could, but _would_
have achieved the same feat, how can it _not_ diminish the special-ness of a
particular person doing it? And yet, many people feel, instinctively, that
what Einstein, Newton, etc. did is, in some sense, special.

You argue that the resolution to this is to recognise the importance of the
results themselves. I would argue that is missing the point. The historical
importance of the _theory_ is a different thing from the achievement of the
person who discovered it, although the more impact theories will, inevitably,
draw more attention to the accomplishments of their discoverers.

My resolution to this paradox is to recognise that the standards of greatness
for an _individual_ 's achievements cannot be fairly compared with those of a
_group_. They can only be fairly compared with what could be expected of the
average individual human in the same circumstances.

When judged against the abilities and achievements of the average, or even
above-average, human, what Einstein achieved was incredible. Likewise, we
instinctively respond positively to any story of success against adversity,
even if the actual achievement isn't special out of a particular context. A
person injured in a car accident, who spends a year obstinately learning to
walk again, isn't achieving anything that most children don't do, but we
applaud their determination, and the outcome in the context of their
individual situation.

Great scientists present us with achievements on the opposite end of this
spectrum. They are gifted individuals who did even more than could have been
expected, and in the context of what the average individual human achieves in
their lifetime, there's no doubt that they are something special.

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mannykannot
I am not concerned for Einstein's status - he's firmly among the greats as far
as I am concerned - but Great Men historiography diminishes the role of all
the other contributors to the progress of science. Most importantly, this
gives a false impression of how science works.

From popular expositions of Einstein's work, you would think he came up with
the profoundly counter-intuitive ideas of spatial contraction and time
dilation single-handedly and out of the blue, yet the Lorentz-Fitzgerald
contraction hypothesis was already well established within the field. This
short article gives an idea of how the relevant ideas developed through
collaboration:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation#History)

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AndrewOMartin
Jacob Bronowski appeared to believe that if Ludwig Boltzmann hadn't done his
bit for atomic theory then Physics would be set back "decades, and perhaps a
hundred years".

[https://youtu.be/LPBjcMKiezg?t=36m50s](https://youtu.be/LPBjcMKiezg?t=36m50s)

Either way this clip from The Ascent of Man is always worth watching, as is
the whole series. It was the inspiration for Carl Sagan's Cosmos which I
understand is fondly received in this community.

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rpiguy
The article doesn't touch on that the "great man" phenomenon also has a lot to
do with the intersection of the person and their time in history. The atom
bomb and the atomic age cemented Einstein, Bohr, etc. as "great men" along
with a lot of other physicists of the time.

It is not only about who could do X, but also when they did it in a historical
context.

Of course sometimes it really is merely a matter of propaganda, or being the
first widely publicized person to do X.

I mean people have been doing this since the myth of Prometheus :-)

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bootsz
"There's nothing you can do that can't be done" \- The Beatles

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codingdave
I understand the desire to wrap an entire blog post in a caveat like the one
the author posted which reads: "Over the years a fair number of the blog posts
here have been fairly speculative, basically me thinking out loud about
something that has recently crossed my mind or my path. What follows is one of
those posts and as I begin writing I have a germ of an idea what I think I
want to say but I can’t guarantee that what will come out is what I initial
intended or that it will be particularly illuminating or informative. "

But that adds nothing to the post. It could have been left out entirely
because it is implied in every single blog post on the internet. And if you
really are uncomfortable enough with something you are publishing that you
feel the need to explicitly add a hedge like that to it... maybe you should
leave it in draft mode for a couple days until you either decide it truly is
ready to publish, or figure out what else is needed.

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soared
I agree, that was odd to see. I think its because the author is writing
outside of his comfort zone? It seems most his work is physics or history
related, and he is stepping into something well outside of those.

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perpetualcrayon
"not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the quality and depth of
it that makes these researchers great men."

I felt a similar way about the philosophers I had to read while studying the
subject in school. Some of the strange beliefs many early philosophers seemed
to describe in their works always led me to think (a) there were probably a
large number of philosophers during that time who had ideas more worthy of
exploring, but (b) since these philosophers in particular were so prolific it
was probably next to impossible during those times to have fruitful
conversations across generations without large works to act as a fulcrum from
which future conversations on the same topic could continue.

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benlorenzetti
I don't find any paradox or trouble in celebrating great scientists. Physics
is often taught alongside a brief motivating history of who and what had
occurred before.

Was there some element of luck that let them succeed first over their
contemporaries? Would the same things have been discovered just several years
later? Probably but the class of people who could have been substituted for
Einstein is small enough and unique enough that celebrating Einstein, Maxwell,
Plank, Newton, etc, seems the same as celebrating that class of people as a
whole.

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vm
If Elon wasn't around, I doubt anyone would have started a company to reduce
space launch costs and some day colonize Mars.

~~~
dogruck
Not sure that I agree. I'd say he's just doing something sooner than we
expected. Exciting and bold, but I don't see people reacting as, "wait, what
is this space travel that you speak of!?"

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vinchuco
Investors would take that risk?

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dogruck
They currently are, by investing in Musk's companies. Am I wrong? (Lebowski)

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vinchuco
I don't know exactly. Surely Paypal helped.

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air7
tl;dr: There are no "Great Men" in science (like Eisenstein, Newton and
Galileo) because everyone used previous work, and had highly competent rival
scholars working on the same problems. If one would have been "thrown under a
tram" another would have produced the same results soon after.

I find this a bit superficial: If only one person can do something, s/he is
great. If there are only two, both are not great.

We have some redundancy of greatness, but not a lot: If you'd thrown the top
10 physicists in the world under a tram, at any moment in time, progress would
suffer greatly.

Bonus fact: There are about 100 recorded runners who have ever ran 100m in
under 10s. While that achievement is now considered "mundane", I find all 100
of them Great.

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stcredzero
_Put simply it is not the originality or uniqueness of their work but the
quality and depth of it that makes these researchers great men._

In some cases, if their work was not of that depth and quality, the field's
progress may not have proceeded as rapidly.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
So much for the paradox.

Edit: Is their quality and depth unique then? I feel sorry for this paradox,
it was really going places for a minute.

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brlewis
Why is this called "The Great Man Paradox"? Is it that we think Marie Curie
would never have been dumb enough to fall under a tram?

