| I've been thinking about something similar. Maybe somebody can shoot it down. For many achievements, most credit belongs to the role, not the person. In other words, the counterfactual of "if we didn't all agree that somebody will do this" would better prevent the achievement than "if one specific person didn't have their talent." We have phrases like "the time is ripe" because we know this. When conditions are in place, things happen. The person in the role is who society has given the permission and the means to do the thing, whose doing of the thing is accepted and even expected, so it's mostly unremarkable when that specific person is the one who does it. That's who we supported in getting it done. No one is surprised when every major fire was put out by firefighters, every touchdown pass was thrown by the quarterback, or every US law was passed by Congress and signed by the President. Maybe Alice is uniquely qualified to be the president, and President Bob is a stooge. He's still the one to sign the law, though, and the law still gets signed. No amount of merit Alice has can change this. Society has still arranged itself to have a person in this role and Bob is just the person. The arrangement (and the unavoidable path-dependence of history) is what magnifies the tiny contribution of the individual's abilities and makes them seem so necessary to the outcome. Given the prerequisites we've hidden in the role are met, the individual is all that's left. Newton was a genius who invented calculus—but so did Leibniz. Einstein was a genius who invented relativity, but arguably so did others whose work we lump in with his; it makes a better story. They all had social institutions to support them achieving whatever they could. Their ability to get it done provided that support was clearly not unique. It's more important that the roles to do the work have people in them, the conditions are in place for someone to do it, than exactly who is in which role. |
Does this mean no more awards? Like, will the Nobel prize always go "to the institution" that made the discovery? Should biographies be titled POTUS: Period X-Y?
You see what I mean? Part of why we attach credit to people, is because people are inherently interesting. Institutions are inherently boring, and supposed to be. Storytelling is maybe not as important as the actual achievement, but it's not nothing either. No child will ever want to grow up to be a nameless crank of the system.