I’m not an expert on the history of science, but it seems to me like:
Lots of psychology could have been done decades or maybe a century earlier, but nobody bothered until the mid-20th century.
If Einstein hadn’t figured out General Relativity, it might have been another 15-25 years before somebody else figured it out.
On the other hand, things like computers and Bayes nets and the structure of DNA wouldn’t have taken much longer to discover if their actual discoverers hadn’t been on the case for whatever reason.
Maybe.
I’m not an expert on the history of science, but it seems to me like:
Lots of psychology could have been done decades or maybe a century earlier, but nobody bothered until the mid-20th century.
If Einstein hadn’t figured out General Relativity, it might have been another 15-25 years before somebody else figured it out.
On the other hand, things like computers and Bayes nets and the structure of DNA wouldn’t have taken much longer to discover if their actual discoverers hadn’t been on the case for whatever reason.