The myth of the myth of the lone genius
<i>History (ancient and recent) is full of geniuses who came up with a revolutionary idea largely on their own</i><p>Not quite. They are always building in the backs of those who came before, even ( and sometime especially ) the failures.<p>Simultaneous independent invention is pretty strong evidence for this. It still takes a uniquely talented person, but when a certain critical mass of prior learning and information is achieved, then for those uniquely talented people the breakthroughs may be the logical next step as they work through the problem. See Newton &amp; Leibniz re:calculus as an example. The author dismisses this example, but both did truly do the heavy lifting, independent of each other, but still with the assistance of collaboration and shared thoughts.<p>The problem is that the author seems to not want to admit to degrees of &quot;lone-ness&quot;. Either a genius did most of the heavy lifting, or they did not-- the author does not seem interested in examining the nuances of how-- and how much-- an individual achieved through relationships with other thinkers resent &amp; past.<p>Even if we were to grant (incorrectly) that Newton would have achieved everything he achieved without any assistance, feedback, discussions, etc with other thinkers of his time, it would be truly ridiculous to think he would have achieved as much if not for everything &amp; everyone who came before them.<p>In short, some genius intellects still benefit from fertile soil, and this does not at all take away from their incredible achievements that still required a genius intellects to put together. The author seems to think acknowledging this somehow takes away from the achievement: it does not. If anything, it elevates it: The genius takes everything that came before and the intellects of their own time, synthesizes it and then transcends it. That transcendence is incredible, but it did not occur in isolation.<p>And the of course there are discoveries that are achieved through gradual, often tedious chipping away at a problem. This is a lot of science, even if the massive paradigm shifts (See Thomas Kuhn&#x27;s work on this topic) may come from a single unique catalyst. The catalyst needs something to catalyze though.