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> Newton - predicts that most advances are made by standing on the shoulders of giants

Giants can be wrong, though; so there's a "giants were standing on our shoulders" problem to be solved. The amyloid-beta hypothesis held up Alzheimer's work for decades based on a handful of seemingly-fraudulent-but-never-significantly-challenged results by the giants of the field.

Kuhn's "paradigm shift" model speaks to this. Eventually the dam breaks, but when it does it's generally not by the sudden appearance of new giants but by the gradual erosion of support in the face of years and years of bland experimental work.

See also astronomy right now, where a never-really-satisfying ΛCDM model is finally failing in the face of new data. And it turns out not only from Webb and new instruments! The older stuff never fit too but no one cared.

Continental drift had a similar trajectory, with literally hundreds of years of pretty convincing geology failing to challenge established assumptions until it all finally clicked in the 60's.

> Newton - predicts that most advances are made by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Leibniz did the same, in the same timeframe. I think this lends credence to the Ortega hypothesis. We see the people that connect the dots as great scientists. But the dots must be there in first place. The dots are the work of the miriad nameless scientists/scholars/scribes/artisans. Once the dots are in place, somebody always shows up to take the last hit and connect them. Sometimes multiple individuals at once.

Which raises the question of whether there are any results so surprising that it's unlikely that any other scientists would have stumbled onto them in a reasonable time frame.

I've heard Einstein's General Relativity described that way.

Special Relativity was not such a big breakthrough. Something like it was on the verge of being described by somebody in that timeframe — all the pieces were in place, and science was headed in that direction.

But General Relativity really took everyone by surprise.

At least, that's my understanding from half-remembered interviews from some decades ago (:

> The dots are the work of the miriad nameless scientists/scholars/scribes/artisans

That is not plausible IMO. Nobody has capacity to read the works of a miriad of nameless scientists, not even Isaac Newton. Even less likely that Newton and Leibnitz were both familiar with the same works of minor scientists.

What is much more likely, is that well-known works of other great mathematicians prepared the foundation for both to reach similar results

> Nobody has capacity to read the works of a miriad of nameless scientists

It gets condensed over time. Take for example Continental Drift/Plate Tectonics theory. One day Alfred Wegener saw the coasts of West Africa and East South America were almost a perfect fit, and connected the dots. But he had no need to read the work of the many surveyors that braved unknown areas and mapped the coasts of both continents in the previous 4-5 centuries, nautical mile by nautical mile, with the help of positional astronomy. The knowledge was slowly integrated, cross checked and recorded by cartographers. Alfred Wegener insight happened at the end of a long cognitive funnel.

That's what review papers are for, and they're published regularly.

One of the ongoing practices of science is people putting out summaries of the state of different parts of fields of work (and reviews of reviews etc.)

Well, Leibniz did a different thing, with a similar part.

What does not go against the hypothesis. Both of their works were heavily subsided by less known researchers that came before them. But it's not clear at all if somebody else would do what they did on each of their particular field. (Just like it's not clear the work they built upon was in any way "mediocre".)

It's very hard to judge science. Both in predictive and retrospective form.

As with all things - both are probably true.

It might be that we attribute post hoc greatness to a small number of folks, but require a lot of very interested / ambitious folks to find the most useful threads to pull, run the labs, catalog data, etc.

It's only after the fact that we go back and say "hey this was really useful". If only we knew ahead of time that Calculus and "tracking stars" would lead to so many useful discoveries!

>Matthew effect - extends successful people are successful observation to scientific publishing. Big names get more funding and easier journal publishing, which gets them more exposure, so they end up with their labs and get their name on a lot of papers.

There's a ton of this among all historical figures in general. Any great person you can name throughout history, almost without exception, were born to wealthy connected families that set them on their course. There are certainly exceptions of self made people here and there, and they do tend to be much more interesting. But just about anyone you can easily name in the history math/science/philosophy were rich kids who were afforded the time and resources to develop themselves.

My personal experience from within medical research area is that its a combination of Matthew + Ortega. Lab heads bring in the money for the army of mediocre phd and junior scientists who eventually leave the field for a variety of reasons. The labs churn through students and post docs. Some are lucky, hitting gold with a particular project and publishing in prestigious journals. Theyre the next gen of lab head who bring in money.

In every lab there are a few ordinary scientists who are the work horses. Writing ethics, supervising students, keeping the new hot shot in line. They rarely get credit (middle author).

Everything crumbles if the lab head leaves. Because they are effectively a CEO of a small company.

Its imo the worst way to do science.