
The problem with superlatives in the history of science - diodorus
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/the-problem-with-superlatives/
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jessriedel
Not a worthwhile article. Complains that it's unfair to call anyone "arguably
the greatest" at something (Einstein for physics) because the author prefers
unconventional choices (Kepler), that history of physics is dominated by
history of mathematical physics, that the philosophy of science is dominated
by the philosophy of physics, and that even having the discussion perpetuates
the myth of the lone genius. He doesn't actually argue for or against these,
just bemoans them.

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charles-salvia
The "lone genius" is somewhat of a myth, but also has a certain amount of
truth to it. For example, Einstein was certainly a lot smarter than the
average person - indeed, probably a lot smarter than most highly-accomplished
scientists and engineers. However, he also was at the right place at the right
time, and would never have come up with General Relativity had it not been for
the work of his predecessors, such as, e.g., Riemann, who enabled Einstein to
think of space-time in non-Euclidean terms, etc.

I think the biggest problem with the "lone genius" mentality is that it
encourages the popular notion that "if it wasn't for Einstein, we'd never have
General Relativity." But of course, this is most certainly false. If Einstein
never existed, someone else would have eventually noticed problems with
Newtonian mechanics over large distances, and ultimately applied Reimannian
geometry to spacetime as a solution. It may have happened years or decades
later, but overall scientific progress is very rarely strictly dependent on
one individual.

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Xcelerate
> It may have happened years or decades later, but overall scientific progress
> is very rarely strictly dependent on one individual.

Which brings up an interesting question. What is the most "far out" discovery
that someone has made? In other words, had that person not thought of it, what
idea would take the longest amount of time for someone else to arrive at? My
bet is on Godel's incompleteness theorems, but I may be missing something even
more bizarre. (I don't necessarily mean _obscure_ though; inter-universal
Teichmüller theory might take forever to reach independent reinvention but
it's also very niche.)

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maverick_iceman
I doubt that Godel was indispensable for the discovery of the incompleteness
theorem. It was one of Hilbert's problems so clearly people were thinking
about it. Moreover, a few years later Turing came up with his notion of
computability from which Godel's incompleteness their can be easily deduced.

