“During his lifetime Newton was already recognised as a transcendent genius. When he died in 1727, the English poet Alexander Pope composed the epitaph: “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; / God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.” In a 2005 poll conducted by England’s Royal Society, Isaac Newton was voted even greater than Albert Einstein. We exalt the lone genius through such comparisons and through honours like the Nobel Prize. But another view of science places less emphasis on the individual. Newton himself acknowledged his intellectual debts by writing, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Was Newton really so special? Or did he just happen to be in the right place at the right time and put two and two together? Calculus was independently invented around the same time by Leibniz. Stories like this - of nearly simultaneous discovery - are common in the history of science, because new ideas are created by combining old ideas in a new way. At any given moment in history, more than one scientist could potentially find the right combination. Since no idea is truly new, no scientist is truly special. We cannot understand the accomplishments of one without knowing how she or he drew on the ideas of others. Neurons are like scientists in this regard.”
— Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How The Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are (via luxe-pauvre)
