On this I agree with you. But the Darwin issue is a bit of a special case—the topic was politically/religiously charged, so it was important that a very respected figure was spearheading the idea. Wallace himself understood it, I think—he sent his research to Darwin instead of publishing it directly. But this is mostly independent of Darwin’s scientific genius (only mostly, because he gained that status with his previous work on less controversial topics).
On the whole, I agree with jbash and Gerald below—“geniuses” in the sense of very smart scientists surely exist, and all else equal they speed up scientific advancement. But they are not that above ordinary smart-ish people. Lack of geniuses is rarely the main bottleneck, so an hypothetical science with less geniuses but more productive average-smarts researchers would probably advance faster if less glamorously.
You could make a parallel between geniuses in science and heroes in war: heroic soldiers are good to have, but in the end wars are won by the side with more resources and better strategies. This does not stop warring nations to make a big deal of heroic exploits, but it’s done to improve morale mostly.
On this I agree with you. But the Darwin issue is a bit of a special case—the topic was politically/religiously charged, so it was important that a very respected figure was spearheading the idea. Wallace himself understood it, I think—he sent his research to Darwin instead of publishing it directly. But this is mostly independent of Darwin’s scientific genius (only mostly, because he gained that status with his previous work on less controversial topics).
On the whole, I agree with jbash and Gerald below—“geniuses” in the sense of very smart scientists surely exist, and all else equal they speed up scientific advancement. But they are not that above ordinary smart-ish people. Lack of geniuses is rarely the main bottleneck, so an hypothetical science with less geniuses but more productive average-smarts researchers would probably advance faster if less glamorously.
You could make a parallel between geniuses in science and heroes in war: heroic soldiers are good to have, but in the end wars are won by the side with more resources and better strategies. This does not stop warring nations to make a big deal of heroic exploits, but it’s done to improve morale mostly.