History will reveal that there were scientists that willfully ignored knowledge for in the pursuit of their own standing in society. One case is that of Bertrand Russell and how he publicly dismissed the work of C.S. Peirce. arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/a…
Indeed also interesting that when Nobert Wiener was under the tutelage of Russell, he strongly argued against his work. Ultimately, Russell's grand plan would crumble with the arrival of Godel.
However, the effect of Russell a longer-lasting consequence of burying the work of C.S. Peirce. Thus leaving humanity with decades of ignorance of how logic should be properly framed!
C.S. Peirce died in 1914, impoverished and his work ignored by academia. We know the story of Edison and Tesla and their competing ideas about electricity. Tesla like Peirce also died impoverished. But what they shared in common was their visions were both the correct one.
From this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Sch… "Frege did "discover" the quantifier in the sense of having the rightful claim to priority; but Peirce and his students discovered it in the effective sense."
We mistakenly assign credit to scientists who at the time gained the most fame and fortune. However, we ignore the reality that perhaps others who deserved to be credited were marginalized by the politics of the day.
Therefore, never be too confident about who are the true pioneers in science. The one's who are most popular are the one's who are better promoters. Never forget that there were scientists like Peirce, Tesla, Wiener and Bohm that were ignored but in hindsight were right.
We cannot expect all scientists to be charismatic and politically astute. There are the rare ones like Feynman and Von Neumann who had advanced social intelligence.
For those who were not, we have to make an extra effort to study what they discovered. The additional investment will allow you to see something that cannot be seen by people who follow only the well-traveled path.
Innovation is reserved for the few who are willing to open their minds to alternative viewpoints. Peirce in fact attempted to formalize this in what he called Abduction.
The revolutions in science do not occur by only differentiating and integrating knowledge that already exists. They occur through an abductive logic that arises from creatively imagining new models of this world.
In our quest for artificial general intelligence, it may simply be difficult to imagine that someone impoverished had imagined the solution more than a century ago.
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