RE: There Is No Father Of Flight
Well, you can sorta see how this might be true.
But then again, it is hard to say this after you have met a few great men.
The average man would never think to fly.
They would never even dream of it.
Their in the inventors mind comes a spark of intuition and drive to see it manifest. And usually, to these men, the whole world is against them. They are not standing on the backs of those that came before, they have to blaze completely new trails. (and usually get ostracized for their journey)
The guy who cured stomach ulcers... The WHOLE world knew it was caused by stress.
Galileo was sentenced to house arrest for life, because he dared to say, maybe the earth goes around the sun.
And the Wright Brothers, were ridiculed for their attempt.
So, no, I do not consider these great men to see further because they stood on the shoulders of giants. They first had to get off those "shoulders" and completely blaze a new trail.
Actually the newest research in stomach ulcers points out that stress is not the cause and it is false believe. The cause is likely to be Helicobacter pylori bacteria or certain medications.
Wright Brothers were ridiculed but they would have never built their machine if not for all those attempts of inventors before them. They weren't born with the knowledge. They learnt it from someone else.
The guy who cured stomach ulcers is a really old story, so I didn't feel I needed to write it out.
Whole world believes stomach ulcers are caused by stress. Barry Marshall comes along and says its not caused by stress, its caused by a bacteria. He literally has to infect himself, and then cure it... and it still took a while for people to believe him.
So, Barry Marshall wasn't working with any prior knowledge, he went against it.
The Wright Brothers didn't follow any previous inventors. In fact, there were none that they found. If you read their story you would understand that. They truly went against common knowledge to do what they did.
No, he was working with the prior knowledge. Medical knowledge he has acquired, specifically about bactieria.
He wasn't born with that knowledge. He had come up to this idea after all the experiences and knowledge he acquire from other people (their books, lectures, shared ideas etc). Wright Brothers idea continued on ideas of others who were before them. They had to learn their skills and had to be influenced and inspired by knowledge from people before them.
The idea that someone can come up with some idea without influence of the environent is an arrogant idea. It suggests that human is the only entity in universe that can work (or think) without being affected by the environment.