The article is very interesting, but there is this Hollywood simplistic approach where one man is responsible for all things. The text even mention the Allies developing a poison gas, why not other German chemic? No one other person would be able to discover how to produce amonia? I don't subscribe to this way of looking into historical figures.
Nevertheless, a great text.
The world has yet to churn out another mind quite like Einstein's, that flips convention on its head, or opens up humankind's collective knowledge by an order of magnitude. Special people, like Einstein, this man, Norman Borlaug or Ada Lovelace, I think, may have just been the right people at the right moment.
Having read somewhat widely, as a kid, about the history of technology, I was struck by how often several people were working independently on the same ideas at the same time, but that is not so surprising once you realize that the timing is often determined by when some prerequisite knowledge became available, or some prerequisite capability was mastered. Einstein stands among the most original thinkers of all time, but even he was standing on the shoulders of people like Heaviside, Fitzgerald and Lorentz (and Maxwell, of course) - yet the first three, at least, are invisible in popular historiography.
It is a case of having the right person in the right place at the right time, Einstein would have not had his theories had he been around 20 years earlier, or if he had not had the opportunities that he did. And if he had not been around then I think it would have been others. It is about the environment, Calculus was developed by two people simultaneously.
As to why we haven't had someone who has done this, well who's to say that we haven't and they are just overlooked? Or that greater capital expenditure it has to be groups of people (finding DNA, cloning, Graphene, etc). Or that there has simply not been the right environment.
Draw a line between these and choosing what field of study or what kind of change to the world counts to make a "special person" changes the number of special people dramatically.
Didn't take the Allies long to muster a response though, and they had their own Nobel Laureate Victor Grignard to build chemical weapons for them.
Look at the history of sound recording[0] for example. You can see that the technology that made it possible existed for years and years before anyone attempted such a feat. Now imagine if the first one who decided to record audio never done it would you think that we will be where we are now because "For sure someone would have done it" argument? I highly doubt that.
What bugs me though is what are the things that could exist right now but are not because someone still didn't think about them.
Reminds me of Hero's engine [1]. Had a single person decided to build a working industrial steam engine back then, then it is possible that the industrial revolution could've happened two thousand years ago.
I believe the technology to build it was there, nobody had the imagination to see the potential for this though.
Humanity missed its opportunity back then, thankfully we had another chance almost 1800 hundred years latter and this time there were people that seized the opportunity [2],[3]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine
However, it was probably only worth using one once labor costs reached a certain threshold. e.g. if you were an ancient roman landlord with abundant slave labor, why would you go to the trouble and expense of building steam engines to remove water from your mines rather than just having some workers work the pumps?
Moreover a Newcomen engine was so inefficient that it was really only usable when sited right at a coal mine, and in ancient times there were plenty of surface coal sites that didn't require deep mines (and thus pumps).
It's hard to imagine someone leaping straight to a Watt engine, especially given the metallurgy required.
I am making a separate argument - this would not have been invented at all, yet, if humans, throughout history, did not celebrate or recognize specific individuals as being responsible for these monumental discoveries or events.
I'm skeptical. What leads you to conclude that we need to pretend that people did more than what they did, or otherwise we wouldn't have computers and governments? I'd say we have plenty of inventions more important than computers whose authors were never really recognized, at least in their lifetimes. Were the inventors of the toilet really hailed for their accomplishment?
If we, as a society, did not assign degrees of greatness to accomplishments, there would not really be any. You're free to disagree, but to me, this is an obvious conclusion of human nature and history. Do famous politicians deserve their place in history, given that their accomplishment is the result of thousands to hundreds of millions of people support them? Did Newton deserve his success? By his own word, he was standing on the shoulders of others. However, consider every scientist who followed him desiring to achieve his level of prominence - nearly every human who fervently applies himself to any single pursuit desires that, whether or not they will admit that to themselves or others. If history did not allow the idea of outliers, in favor of the argument that all discoveries were collective achievements or "an eventuality, regardless of who", Newton, and those after, would've had far fewer shoulders to stand on - those minds would've applied themselves elsewhere.
I am not arguing that we, as a society, assign the proper "weight of recognition" to an inventor, discoverer, politician during or after their lifetime - that is a separate question. The chain is regarding "whether or not we should assign large weights of recognition to individuals".
I'll agree to disagree rather than continue writing a thesis - I believe my perspective to be inalienably correct, though.
I didnt imply causation to Hollywood, I just used it as an adjective. I agree that storytelling with heroes personification is very common in humankind since always (since there is written documents at least). It happens that Hollywood became a thing by replicating this phenomena in fiction, so I think is very fit to use it as a qualifier.
But I disagree that this human characteristic is the cause behind human progress.
Collaboration was a human evolutionary advantage, so I think human are more naturally colaborative that competitive, at least intra tribe size levels.
I also think that humans seek recognition among peers - and a peer has a very broad and flexible definition, not necessarily recognition from history. So I disagree that highly focused scientists motivation is to be like historical figures. They want that recognition in life, from peers, not historians.
Still, I also think recognition from others is not the sole motivation for all human endeavors, not even the biggest factor.
I applaud you for that, this gives some hope that not all is lost. A real historian can only be someone who loves the truth ( .. more than his personal well-beign)