Is the lone genius inventor a myth?

The multiple-discovery hypothesis says largely yes. It holds that most discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by several people, and it opposes the traditional "heroic theory" of invention.

The sociologist Robert K. Merton gave the pattern its vocabulary. He defined a "multiple" as a case where similar discoveries are made by people working independently, and contrasted it with a "singleton", a discovery made uniquely by one person or one team. He believed that multiples, not singletons, are the common pattern in science. Cited examples include the blast furnace, the crossbow, powered flight and the telephone. By June 1858 Charles Darwin had completed over two-thirds of On the Origin of Species when he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, whose summary of his theory of natural selection had conclusions identical to Darwin's own. And it is now accepted that Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently of each other.

Why would ideas arrive in clusters? One account says they are fostered by the evolution of communication: roads, printing, schools, reliable postal services, telegraphy, mass media and the internet. William Fielding Ogburn argued that inventions are collective contributions to an existing cultural base and cannot occur unless society already has a certain level of knowledge and expertise in the area.

But the heroic view has defenders. Sidney Hook, who is supportive of it, insisted that genius is not the result of compounding talent, and asked how many run-of-the-mine scientists would do the work of an Einstein. The evidence of multiples shows that an idea was within reach of several people; whether exceptional minds were still needed is a separate argument.