In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz invented calculus more or less concurrently. The question of who published first raged for decades.
In the 1800s, Sir Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace both figured out how new species could arise from existing ones through the force of natural selection. Aware of each other’s work, in 1858 they presented their work together to the Linnaean Society.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray submitted patent applications for the telephone within hours of each other.
But in 1968, when Douglas Engelbart, who passed away recently, presented his live demonstration of a computing system that included the use of a mouse, videoconferencing, word processing, cut-and-paste, hypertext, revision control, and collaborative editing, he was the only person in the world who had put it all together (thanks to Randy Cunningham’s Honorary Unsubscribe for providing, not only the details, but a link to a video of the presentation).
Not the only person in the world to have each of the ideas separately, though … Ted Nelson, for example, had been writing about hypertext since 1963.
We celebrate those who invent something important first. We celebrate those who make important scientific discoveries first. And yet, there’s a certain inevitability to all this. From the inside, these inventions and discoveries are more like races, in which the only question is who will cross the finish line first, than they are like the actions of lone explorers, boldly going where no one has gone before.
Maybe this is why we lionize great leaders more than great scientists and inventors: Without Washington, England probably would have defeated the colonists in the Revolutionary War; without Lincoln, and Grant, the Confederacy probably would have succeeded in seceding; without Roosevelt and Churchill the outcome of World War II would almost certainly have been very different.
Those specific, unique leaders were required. It’s doubtful that, with different leaders, we would have ended up with similar results. Take Lincoln: Had Stephen Douglas won the 1860 election the Confederacy might never have formed and slavery might still be legal. Or, more likely, a very different Civil War might have been fought at a very different time and in a very different way.
This is not true of the great scientists. Take Einstein: Had he never published, the current state of physics would be unaltered.
It’s a hard thought to swallow. Collectively, it’s the scientists of the world who have made our modern world possible. Just look around you and start subtracting everything you depend on that wouldn’t exist had the community of scientists never figured out the laws of thermodynamics, the aforementioned calculus, information theory, and another few dozens or hundreds of disciplines. It’s their byproducts that allow the world to operate with more than 7 billion inhabitants.
The secret is that scientists form communities, and it’s these communities that collectively deserve credit for what we as a species collectively know. The individual scientists who get the most credit are the ones who are just a bit smarter, just a bit quicker, and who work just a bit harder than the rest.
And, to be fair, in some cases are better politicians: Modern physics, for example, is a very expensive discipline; in order to make the big discoveries you first have to gain access to the big equipment.
Understand, I have nothing but respect for the great scientists, and you should too. While there’s no doubt many were and are driven by a sense of competition, they are far more driven by the desire to understand the universe just a bit better than anyone has understood it before.
Just as the great inventors, like Douglas Engelbart, were driven by the desire to make the world just a bit more capable than it was before.
The world of business has more in common with scientists and inventors than with the great political leaders: Should a company fail, while it’s hard on its employees and shareholders, otherwise it doesn’t matter a bit. If a department store closes its doors, shoppers will just buy the same merchandise from someone else; the same is true of just about anyone or any business in the market for goods or services.
Perhaps that’s why the self-importance of some CEOs is so amusing. Even those who help their companies win are, for the most part, simply shifting revenue from another company’s coffers to their own.
It’s just a race. What matters isn’t who wins it. What matters is that enough people are willing to run.
Bob:
Your technical analysis has always been very insightful and cogent, but your philosophical commentary is even better, and even more appreciated.
Thanks!
Best regards,
Marc Linville
As an alternative for the historical perspective: if Stephen Douglas had won the 1860 election, the south might not have seceded *when it did*, but later, and under negotiated terms – hence we might not have the United States as we know it.
Also, you suggested “Take Einstein: Had he never published, the current state of physics would be unaltered.” But assume, arguendo, that he had not published; someone else probably would have, eventually, but would science have advanced at the same pace? If we didn’t understand physics the way we did in the early 1940’s, might we have missed the opportunity to develop a nuclear weapon before we had to invade Japan to end WWII? Might not the deaths of millions more Japanese and hundreds of thousands of Americans have dramatically changed history as well? How many of the great pioneers of the computing age, for instance, had fathers who fought in WWII and might not have survived to procreate? How many Japanese innovations of the post-war era might not have happened, or not happened when they did, because the innovators who came up with them didn’t survive the war?
The cascading effects from that one change – Einstein not publishing when he did – could be enormous.
Your main point, though, about business is probably true.
I agree with your point that scientific discoveries are largely inevitable. My father, Vic Vyssotsky, was the technical lead on Project Mac, a joint Bell Labs/GE/MIT project to develop a multi-user time sharing system in the 60s. At the time computer programs managed system resources, such as storage, directly. This because a major obstacle for a shared system, and the project stalled. Dad then conceived a layer (shell at the time) that interfaced between programs and the hardware to manage system resources, and also decided to manage storage as a linear sequence of bytes, rather than as a device.
Basically, he invented the Operating System and the file. Thirty years later, when I asked him about his contribution to Computer Science, he responded, “They were concepts that had to be uncovered. If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.”
I tend to agree that science changes things more than politics does. Asimov said that even if the Nazis had won WWII, not much in daily life would have changed for the survivors. But the invention of the car or electric lights changed daily life for everyone.
OTOH, I think most of the major problems of human civilization occur irrelevant of politics.
Example #1. Assume the Civil War was not fought or was won by the south and America itself was split into several nations. What would change about how many people there are currently in China or India? What would change about the effects of air pollution, water pollution, and global warming?
Example #2. The Arab Spring was _caused_ by recessions, not by dictators per se. While every group that protested was actually protesting the dictator, that same dictator had been in power for 40 years so him _being_ dictator was not what changed this year from last year. It was something else that got the populace fired up enough to take to the streets.
Bob, I agree wholeheartedly with you about the inevitability of many developments. I reached the same conclusion a few decades ago. On the bright (for you) side, I am still procrastinating about sharing that revolutionary thought with the world.
Also, I’m sure that “Randy Cunningham” appreciated the plug, if he reads KJR. But I feel that he would have appreciated it more if you had used his real name: Randy Cassingham.