Natural selection is the combination of two ideas: 1. Population characteristics change over time if members of the population are systematically disallowed reproduction. 2. Nature systematically disallows reproduction.
I’m willing to accept that I’m suffering from hindsight bias. But will you at least give me that his theory is much easier to understand than any of the others? And maybe a few guesses on the topic of why it was so hard to think of?
Also, even if an insight is rare, that doesn’t mean its bearer deserves credit. Many inventors made important accidental discoveries, and I imagine luck must have factored into Darwin’s discovery somehow as well. If 1% of biologists who had gone on the voyage Darwin went on also would have developed the theory, does he still deserve to be on the list of the top ten intellectuals?
Addendum: Here is an argument that ancient scientists and mathematicians don’t deserve as much credit as we give them: they were prolific. We have no modern equivalent of Euler or Gauss; John Von Neumann was called “the last of the great mathematicians”. There are two possibilities here: either the ancient thinkers were smarter than we were, or their accomplishments were more important and less difficult than those of modern thinkers. The Flynn effect suggests that IQs are rising over time, so I’m inclined to believe that their accomplishments were genuinely less difficult.
And even if making new contributions to these fields isn’t getting more difficult, surely you must grant that it must become more difficult at some point, assuming that to make a new contribution to a field you must understand all the concepts your contribution relies on, and all the concepts those concepts rely on, etc.
Natural selection is the combination of two ideas: 1. Population characteristics change over time if members of the population are systematically disallowed reproduction. 2. Nature systematically disallows reproduction.
I’m willing to accept that I’m suffering from hindsight bias. But will you at least give me that his theory is much easier to understand than any of the others? And maybe a few guesses on the topic of why it was so hard to think of?
Extraordinarily so, yes—it does astonish me that no one hit it before. Nonetheless, the empirical fact remains, so...
I suppose the sense of “mystery” people attached to life played into it somewhat.
People were breeding animals, people were selecting them, and...socially there was already some idea of genetic fitness. Men admired men who could father many children.The idea of heredity was there.
Honestly, the more I think of it, the more I share your confusion. It is deeply odd that we were blinded for so long. Perhaps we should work to figure out how this happened, and whether we can avoid it in the future.
I don’t think luck can factor in quite as much as you imagine though. We’re not attempting to award credit, so much as we are attempting to identify circumstances which tend to produce people who tend to produce important insights. Darwin’s insight was incredibly important, and had gone unseen for centuries. To me, that qualifies him.
Even if you put it at a remove, even if you say, well, Darwin was uniquely inspired by his voyage, another biologist could have done the same, then the voyage becomes important. Why didn’t another biologist wind up on a voyage like that? What can we do to ensure that inspiring experiences like that are available to future intellectuals? In this way, Darwin’s life remains an important data point, even if—especially if—we deny that there was anything innately superior about the man.
Addendum: Here is an argument that ancient scientists and mathematicians don’t deserve as much credit as we give them: they were prolific.
Agreed, completely—they pulled the low-hanging fruit from the search space.
I’m confused—do you mean that deism, specifically, made it hard to think of, or easy? And I’m not sure many were deists—I can’t find numbers, but I was under the impression deism was always a really small movement.
EDIT: nevermind, reference to deism was removed in an edit.
I meant that I thought the fact that so many took for granted the fact that God created the animals was one of the factors that made evolution hard to think of, and Darwin shouldn’t get genius status just because he overcame it. But then I remembered Lamarck and thought better of it. I still think it is a weak argument in favor of Darwin not being a genius, though.
Natural selection is the combination of two ideas: 1. Population characteristics change over time if members of the population are systematically disallowed reproduction. 2. Nature systematically disallows reproduction.
I’m willing to accept that I’m suffering from hindsight bias. But will you at least give me that his theory is much easier to understand than any of the others? And maybe a few guesses on the topic of why it was so hard to think of?
Also, even if an insight is rare, that doesn’t mean its bearer deserves credit. Many inventors made important accidental discoveries, and I imagine luck must have factored into Darwin’s discovery somehow as well. If 1% of biologists who had gone on the voyage Darwin went on also would have developed the theory, does he still deserve to be on the list of the top ten intellectuals?
Addendum: Here is an argument that ancient scientists and mathematicians don’t deserve as much credit as we give them: they were prolific. We have no modern equivalent of Euler or Gauss; John Von Neumann was called “the last of the great mathematicians”. There are two possibilities here: either the ancient thinkers were smarter than we were, or their accomplishments were more important and less difficult than those of modern thinkers. The Flynn effect suggests that IQs are rising over time, so I’m inclined to believe that their accomplishments were genuinely less difficult.
And even if making new contributions to these fields isn’t getting more difficult, surely you must grant that it must become more difficult at some point, assuming that to make a new contribution to a field you must understand all the concepts your contribution relies on, and all the concepts those concepts rely on, etc.
Extraordinarily so, yes—it does astonish me that no one hit it before. Nonetheless, the empirical fact remains, so...
I suppose the sense of “mystery” people attached to life played into it somewhat.
People were breeding animals, people were selecting them, and...socially there was already some idea of genetic fitness. Men admired men who could father many children.The idea of heredity was there.
Honestly, the more I think of it, the more I share your confusion. It is deeply odd that we were blinded for so long. Perhaps we should work to figure out how this happened, and whether we can avoid it in the future.
I don’t think luck can factor in quite as much as you imagine though. We’re not attempting to award credit, so much as we are attempting to identify circumstances which tend to produce people who tend to produce important insights. Darwin’s insight was incredibly important, and had gone unseen for centuries. To me, that qualifies him.
Even if you put it at a remove, even if you say, well, Darwin was uniquely inspired by his voyage, another biologist could have done the same, then the voyage becomes important. Why didn’t another biologist wind up on a voyage like that? What can we do to ensure that inspiring experiences like that are available to future intellectuals? In this way, Darwin’s life remains an important data point, even if—especially if—we deny that there was anything innately superior about the man.
Agreed, completely—they pulled the low-hanging fruit from the search space.
I’m confused—do you mean that deism, specifically, made it hard to think of, or easy? And I’m not sure many were deists—I can’t find numbers, but I was under the impression deism was always a really small movement.
EDIT: nevermind, reference to deism was removed in an edit.
I meant that I thought the fact that so many took for granted the fact that God created the animals was one of the factors that made evolution hard to think of, and Darwin shouldn’t get genius status just because he overcame it. But then I remembered Lamarck and thought better of it. I still think it is a weak argument in favor of Darwin not being a genius, though.