This article is an elaborate dance around a very simple and obvious point: for any given discovery, only one person can ever get the credit for discovering it for the first time, which means there's a huge first-mover advantage at the frontiers of knowledge. It's not at all surprising, therefore, that most of the "great philosophers" are dead. (We're actually living at a rare moment in history where many of the people at the forefront of a major technological revolution are still alive.)
We're actually living at a rare moment in history where many of the people at the forefront of a major technological revolution are still alive.
I don't understand this statement. Aren't the people at the forefront of a technological revolution (or anything else) always alive (otherwise how can they be at the forefront ?).
Major technological revolutions are not all that common. Fire, agriculture and metallurgy is pretty much all there was until Newton. Then in the 18th century you got chemistry and thermodynamics, which led to the industrial revolution. In the 19th century you got Darwin and Pasteur which led to major advances in biology and medicine. In the 20th century you got quantum mechanics and relativity, which led to electronics and nuclear power, and then since WW2 or so you have computers. That's basically it. Everything in the last few decades and currently on the horizon is really just slicing-and-dicing those half dozen or so fundamental developments in different ways. Advances of that magnitude are rare, and it is not at all clear when the next one will come.
The biggest strides are always taken early in the luge of a discipline. The point is that the art of mechanical engineering, mathematics, woodworking, classical mechanics, and many other endeavours had their large early strides taken long ago.
