Many things that are obvious in retrospect are anything but at the time the important debates happen, and they become obvious in retrospect precisely because someone has come along who paid attention to what—in retrospect—really mattered.
See James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (which puts Jacobs’ work in that kind of broader perspective, largely in line with calcsam’s comment) and Duncan Watt’s Everything is Obvious (which lays out the research on why the social sciences are especially prone to that phenomenon).
Right, inferential gaps always look smaller when they’re behind you.
I’m not claiming that her insights were obvious, just that they weren’t especially well constructed or well supported and that (critically) that doesn’t seem to have improved with time.
Many things that are obvious in retrospect are anything but at the time the important debates happen, and they become obvious in retrospect precisely because someone has come along who paid attention to what—in retrospect—really mattered.
See James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (which puts Jacobs’ work in that kind of broader perspective, largely in line with calcsam’s comment) and Duncan Watt’s Everything is Obvious (which lays out the research on why the social sciences are especially prone to that phenomenon).
Right, inferential gaps always look smaller when they’re behind you.
I’m not claiming that her insights were obvious, just that they weren’t especially well constructed or well supported and that (critically) that doesn’t seem to have improved with time.