[LeifCarrotson]

Yes. That's how basically all expansion to the field of human knowledge is constructed today.

A human can only ingest and understand so much information in so much time. As Matt Might[1] eloquently described in "The Illustrated Guide to a PhD" [2], learning the basics of an entire field of study is what a bachelor's degree is for, a master's degree gives you a specialty, graduate students reading research papers like this one is how you get to the edge of human knowledge...only then can you start building on that sum of knowledge.

[1] http://matt.might.net/

[2] http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

[btrettel]

I don't agree with that article. I previously wrote about my disagreement on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107

To summarize, a PhD often (maybe even typically) does not bring someone to the edge of human knowledge. Often a PhD gets people near it, but given the shear amount of scientific literature out there, it's difficult to know where the edge is.

[redtexture]

History PhDs often break new ground.

I believe more than a few scientific PhDs do as well, and more than a few can become journal articles, or amount to a compilation of previously successfully accepted journal articles.

This item, an outstanding PhD thesis of an outstanding historian.

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War

Eric Foner