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Theheroic theory of invention and scientific development is the view that the principal authors ofinventions andscientific discoveries are uniqueheroic individuals—i.e., "great scientists" or "geniuses".[1]
A competing hypothesis (that ofmultiple discovery) is that most inventions and scientific discoveries are made independently and simultaneously by multiple inventors and scientists.
The multiple-discovery hypothesis may be most patently exemplified in the evolution ofmathematics, since mathematical knowledge is highly unified and any advances need, as a general rule, to be built from previously established results through a process of deduction. Thus, the development ofinfinitesimal calculus into a systematic discipline did not occur until the development ofanalytic geometry, the former being credited to bothSir Isaac Newton andGottfried Leibniz, and the latter to bothRené Descartes andPierre de Fermat.
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