Thursday’s Big Idea
Power Thinking
The psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has devoted more than three decades to studying the notion of scientific genius, a phenomenon Simonton says is disappearing from modern science.
The genius scientist is one who engineers novel expertise and provokes momentous leaps. And yet, the giants have already done their work, and we are merely perched on their shoulders, completing their work.
Since existing theories and instruments have already probed "the earliest seconds and farthest reaches of the Universe," Simonton argues that "future advances are likely to build on what is already known rather than alter the foundations of knowledge."
