One of the most important insights of Darwinism is that there's little, if any, discontinuity between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". At least in biology.
Of course, in human activities the "environment" is also man-given. We're able to challenge structural assumptions in, say, engineering, because broader maps (possibly showing that we're grinding at local optima) have been made by physicists, mathematicians or even philosophers. But these too are working at their "microevolution".
There's never a context where someone is thinking hard at the "fundamental assumptions" of an applied problem and brings a 100-year leap in the basic science, for example.
There's never a context where someone is thinking hard at the "fundamental assumptions" of an applied problem and brings a 100-year leap in the basic science, for example.
I would argue that Turing tackling Hilbert's program qualifies. And I suspect, that the concept of DNA, and the concept of evolution itself qualify as well.
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One of the most important insights of Darwinism is that there's little, if any, discontinuity between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". At least in biology.
Of course, in human activities the "environment" is also man-given. We're able to challenge structural assumptions in, say, engineering, because broader maps (possibly showing that we're grinding at local optima) have been made by physicists, mathematicians or even philosophers. But these too are working at their "microevolution".
There's never a context where someone is thinking hard at the "fundamental assumptions" of an applied problem and brings a 100-year leap in the basic science, for example.
I would argue that Turing tackling Hilbert's program qualifies. And I suspect, that the concept of DNA, and the concept of evolution itself qualify as well.