The problem with superlatives in the history of science | Hacker News Reader

The problem with superlatives in the history of science

thonyc.wordpress.com

22 pointsdiodorus5 comments

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.

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.

> 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.)

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.

I agree about what you see as the biggest problem with the "lone genius" myth, but the myth itself is so insidious to me, with so many facets, that volumes more could be said about it.

I agree with the OP that the article isn't as cogent as it could be, but it touches on a lot of problems with the myth, and I agree with its general argument.

People seem to have difficulty with the idea that just because ability and discipline are necessary to success in creative endeavors like science, doesn't mean that they're sufficient, and that a lot of other factors come into play, many outside the individual. There's also factors like the discipline of interest--some are undoubtedly much more difficult to make progress in at any given moment in time. I suspect you could take the most intelligent, conscientious, persistent individual on earth, and if you set them to task with certain problems, no one would hear of them because of the difficulties involved. You might argue that choosing the right task is part of the problem, but is that really the best argument? Do we wait until all the problems of chemistry are resolved before moving on to biology, etc.?

Sometimes I feel like society succumbs to surviviorship bias because the alternative is too bleak. We're willing to defensively ignore the problems with it because to do otherwise is to face the capricious reality of chance and society.

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