alt Hacker News> (And, historically, you only need less than a dozen.)
This seems initially like a pretty outlandish claim to me. Could you clarify what you're referring to here?
> (And, historically, you only need less than a dozen.)
This seems initially like a pretty outlandish claim to me. Could you clarify what you're referring to here?
I'm not the one you're replying to, but the claim seems very reasonable to me.
Fundamental breakthroughs in how to think about scientific subjects usually are created by fairly small groups of people. A lot more people are involved in popularizing it, and then filling out the details. But it is rare for it to start with a large number of people.
For example that list in the case of quantum mechanics was Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schrödinger.
You can think of this as the scientific version of the 2 pizza rule.