Stupid Proverb

[poliphilo]

"Great Minds think alike".

Only they don't, do they? The whole point of great minds is that they think differently.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Happens quite often. The development of science builds on what comes before -- the "shoulders of giants" thing -- and, given the same set of data, the same conclusions ought to be reached.

Information points to truth, if it can be deciphered, and the same set of information points to the same truth.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Agreed - to which I'd add that it often happens that people are trying to solve the same problems (i.e. How can one express accelerating motion mathematically? and What is the mechanism for change in species?) - problems that would not have seemed urgent or even meaningful to earlier generations.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Though, as I understand it, Wallace and Darwin were working from quite different sets of data- Darwin in the South Seas and Wallace in South East Asia.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. Maybe steepholm's statement is more accurate -- they're trying to answer the same questions, and trying to gather SIMILAR data to do so. Even if the exact data sets are discrete, they were gathered for similar purposes.