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This is essentially the theory of multiple discovery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery), as opposed to the heroic theory of discovery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_theory_of_invention_and...).

Additionally, I think the "inevitability of discovery" is more true now than it has ever been. In the early 1830s there were relatively few young naturalists and geologists looking at the islands and species of the south Pacific that were well positioned to develop a theory of evolution by natural selection. Today, looking at comparable questions, there are a great deal more young scientists competing to answer those questions.

One thing that I think the original comment and this response both point out is that we as a society could still do a much better job of encouraging young thinkers towards challenging and meaningful problems, despite the fact that we do a much better job of it relative to the early 1830s. This encouragement influences not whether the problems get solved, but how quickly.

So, in other words, it steam engines when it's steam engine time, and it relativities when it's relativity time.

Not exactly. Steam Engine time doesn't come on its own; it's created by people.

It's like any job -- we don't need all of the available workers, but we do need some. And in creative work, we need multiple perspectives to help improve the idea.

The funny thing is that the theory of evolution is an instance of multiple discoverers, one is just much more famous than the other. Alfred Russel Wallace is "the other guy." There are a few examples of truly heroic discoveries, but often they aren't recognized in their lifetime, the discovery needs other supporting discoveries to be identified. Mendel and Bayes are examples of people who should have revolutionized their field, but their importance wasn't recognized u til after their deaths. The progress of society is based on a lot of little discoveries over a few big ones. I agree that we need to be encouraging people to make those little discoveries.

“ just because someone did great things in the past doesn't mean they will in the future”

I would say a Picasso or a Da Vinci is much more likely to create something meaningful given the track record at the height of their career, than some random person off the street.

I think you’re underestimating the amount of effort it takes to master a given field, and the subsequent dividends that are paid when you achieve mastery.

Not necessarily. After some point, any new Picasso was just "more of the same". The reason his later works are still valuable is mostly because of our fetishism with the products of (already) famous artists + inflation by galleries and art merchants -- not because of any unique new insight/style/proposition/innovation/inherent value they had.

You chose a bad example.

Picasso is famous for reinventing himself and abandoning cubism (which he invented) to study and pursue classical painting.

But would those classical paintings be as famous if his earlier work wasn't? Probably not.

And Billy Joel switched from Pop to Classical, but his Classical work wasn't as important as his Pop work. He's no Picasso but the pattern holds.

>Picasso is famous for reinventing himself and abandoning cubism (which he invented) to study and pursue classical painting.

He abandoned cubism in his 20s or so. He afterwards had 50+ years of more boring work with less re-invention.

There's a good reason why many laws in math and physics have two or three names. They are oftentimes discovered simultaneously by several people and it's not always possible to tell who was first.

> he couldn't restart the spark of genius, or he simply didn't have fuel for it.

In other words, by the time he had proven himself for academia, it was too late to fund him. You are proving the OPs point that academia isn't the place to do novel research in.

What do you mean? Einstein was well funded for decades, and his famous work wasn't funded at all.

> What do you mean? Einstein was well funded for decades, and his famous work wasn't funded at all.

That's exactly what is being pointed out.

His famous work wasn't funded, so perhaps funding at that point would have resulted in even more work at that level of insight and impact, or perhaps the we would have had the special and general theories of relativity sooner.

Conversely, by the time he was famous and therefore well-funded, he was no longer producing work at that level.

So, the idea is that funding doesn't go where and when it would do the most good.

Personally I think generalizing from one famous person's track record isn't such a great idea, but there is certainly data that suggests that committees aren't particularly good at choosing which grant proposals to fund[0][1][2], and that it would be a good idea to choose at least some proposals randomly[3] (as long as they meet a minimal threshold of quality/sanity), if only to shift the incentives away from trying to game the system.

[0] https://elifesciences.org/articles/13323

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/115/12/2952

[2] https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4797

[3] https://mbio.asm.org/content/7/2/e00422-16

I think there is another angle to it. After a major result, is the purpose to continue finding major results or broadcast, proselytize, and teach.

One of the crazy things that I have found as a senior engineer, I focus much more on growing people in the space I created. Afterall, if the space I create can't be occupied by people, then I failed.

For Einstein, how much of his time was dedicated towards the education of ideas versus trying to solve new problems. I don't know, but it is worth considering what the purpose of tenure. Is the idea of tenure to encourage people to find new results, or to continue teaching their ideas?

I understood tenure to more or less mean "We've found your contributions valuable enough to date that we are now ensuring that you can never be fired for having the 'wrong' opinions, thus guaranteeing your academic freedom."

Whether that academic freedom is intended to enable teaching or further research probably varies by institution and subject/department, and maybe individually as well.