General history books compress time so much that they often give the impression that major intellectual breakthroughs result from sudden strokes of insight. But when you read a history of just one breakthrough, you realize how much “chance favors the prepared mind.” You realize how much of the stage had been set by others, by previous advances, by previous mistakes, by a soup of ideas crowding in around the central insight made later.
Yes. Let me add to this...
First, something I said earlier:
Next, some related Wikipedia articles: Great Man Theory; Heroic theory of invention and scientific development; Multiple Discovery; List of multiple discoveries.
Finally, some papers & books: Merton (1961); Merton (1963); Branningan (1981); Lamb & Easton (1984); Simonton (1988); Park (2000).