[geoschmo]

Very true. However there is often a difference between pure scientific discovery and technological advancment. The greats that you mention and others like them are exceedingly rare. Most of technology and invention is a gradual process of hard work and experimentation that is built on the work of these greats. "Standing on the shoulders of giants". And often great intuitive leaps have been made by otherwise obscure researchers that never did anything truely notable before or after their "one great discovery".

The great theoretical physics done by Einstein and others uncovered the principles of atomic power, but it was the grunt work done by many labs all over the world that put the theories into pratical applications like nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Whether or speed of advancment in this grunt work is linerly related to the number of people working on the problem is debatable. Likely reasonable arguments could be made on both sides. I am not sure if it's possible to ever know for sure, even for past discoveries, much less predict future ones.

Don't get me wrong though. I am not trying to make the case that Proportions somehow "has it wrong". I am simply engaging in a philisophical discussion.

I tend to take a much more abstract view of all of this stuff in SE4 anyway, rather than try to shoehorn it into a strict realistic view. I see research in SE4 as being the more practical application side of things. It's the R&D. In many cases "more money" is exactly what brings about innovation.

Geoschmo