I think this applies to everything. The "geniuses" we praise (Einstein, Newton, Galileo) are not superhumans with access to secret knowledge that only their mind could unlock, they are just very clever and astute individual that studied a lot and figured out things by applying a mix of logic and intuition to information that everybody already had.

If they didn't exist, someone else would have (likely) eventually come to the same conclusions. Heck maybe someone did years earlier but never told anybody.