[AndyRewtD]

I've gotta say thatI disagree.

There are surely such individuals alive today and others that have been between now and then. They may not be as visible or, if they are, are rarely presented in the same domain as leonardo. I think it's better to say that no one alive today is as fetishized for their multi-disciplinary capibility as Da Vinci.

It's also not hard to argue that we have more surface area for innovation today as well a society that offers the 'resources' (i say this broadly) for individuals to pursue explorations and discovery.

[agentgt]

It is fairly hard to measure quality and I guess to some extent quantity of ideas coming from individuals and I agree Da Vinci is vastly overrated.

But do you honestly think there are individuals alive today making extreme broad breakthroughs like Isaac Newton?

Part of the reason I believe previous scholars were so successful in coming up with a plethora of ideas is that it was easier to observe things. For example Galileo just needed some really good glass aligned properly to see planets but today the amount of manpower needed to see into the cosmos far exceeds a single individual and their budget. To detect neutrinos required a multi story tank filled with water with extreme precision instruments. Meanwhile Newton took some glass (glass was damn useful back then... it was like the computer for innovation) and noticed light could be broken into colors.

[SolaceQuantum]

Yes I think there are individuals making extreme breakthroughs in every field of science in modern day.

[agentgt]

Of course but they are not broad ideas like creating a new type of math while explaining how planets circle the sun kind of ideas.

Like I said earlier I don't know how you can place the value or rate ideas but please point out some individuals making cross disciplinary breakthroughs at the level of Newton today. I'm actually sincere because I would like to know more about these individuals.

[bigger_cheese]

The big issue I have with the "solitary genius" theory is that ideas do not occur in a vacuum Isaac Newton who several people in this thread have mentioned went to great lengths himself to dispel this myth. One of his most famous quotes is:

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Scientific progress is incremental it builds on the work and ideas that have come before.

[pitt1980]

"we have more surface area for innovation today as well a society that offers the 'resources' (i say this broadly) for individuals to pursue explorations and discovery"

yeah, it's not obvious that the thesis here is true, in fact I would suggest that its probably not true

the surface area of new idea is probably expanding, and the resources for finding new ideas is almost certainly expanding as well

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seems like the better argument is that ideas in the future will be in different idea spaces than the current ideas

and that within a specific idea space, you can exhaust the ideas