Great Minds

A shift toward teamwork raises new questions whether teams produce better science. Teams produce higher impact research and more frequentlz cited research. Although they might bring greater collective knowldedge and effort, but they are known to experience social network and coordination losses that make them underperform individuals even in highly complex tasks.

‘No grand idea was ever born in a conference’. From this view point a shift to teamwork may be a costy phenomena or one that promotes low impact science, whereas the highest impact ideas remain the domain of great minds working alone.

Science, The increasing dominance of teams in production of knowledge, Vol 316, 18 May 2007

P.S. The medieval conception regarded church and state as one body in different aspects. This view persisted in the Elizabethean settlement, and in the High Toryism of the 17th and 18th centuries.





Certain broad features can be painted into the picture of the Republic of Letters. The existence of communal standard, highlights the first of these that the scholarly world considered itself to be in some ways separate from the rest of society. 17th and 18th century scholars felt that, at least in the academic realm, they were not subject to the norms and values of the wider society. Unlike their nonscholarly counterparts, they thought they lived in an essentially egalitarian community, in which all members had equal rights to criticize the work and conduct of others. İn practice this egalitarian ideal was not so solid, but the hierarchial structure structure the community did take on was based on different standards from society at large. The Republic of Letters in theory ignored distinctions of nationality and religion. ‘Be they protestants, be they Catholics, without any regard to the difference of religion. The Learned World was one World, international and nondenominational, rising above the petty concerns of church and state.

Goldgar, A., (1995), İmpolite Learning (period 1680-1750), Yale Univ Press