From: Paul Hughes (psiphius@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat May 29 2004 - 20:47:46 MDT
--- Eliezer Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Mark Waser wrote:
> > 6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The
> image of a lone genius
> > who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory
> and ends up making a
> > revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of
> Hollywood's science-fiction
> > films, but it is hard to find examples in real
> life.
>
> Both the thesis and the antithesis are heartwarming
> urban legends.
> Examining scientific history shows that the degree
> to which work is
> accomplished by lone genius depends on how much the
> field is in chaos
> before the lone genius shows up.
I would also like to point out that Calculus, either
Newtown or Leibniz, as well as the Special and General
theories of Relativity by Einstien were all developed
in isolation. If fact, Newtown says that if it wasn't
for the plague of 1666, he would have never had the
needed privacy in which to invent Calculus.
Paul
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