" . . . the originators of new ideas are too protective of their
brainchildren to develop them properly; creativity impliies a
corresponding lack of perspective." - Paul Dirac

Going from one mathematical science development after another
reveals a lot of different slants and takes on this; for instance,
Archimede's integral and differential calculus was hampered by his
use of geometric algebra and arithmetic; while some like Frederick
Gauss argued and wondered why and how come Archemedes didn't think
to make the hindu/arabic numerals; well, I'd argue that Archemedes
certainly developed his ideas 'improperly', but considering lifes
pressures and that he could(obviously) see how to get the results he
wanted without travelling all over the world . . . stumbling on
India's invention of zero . . . hanging out with the arabs to see
them symbolize algebra and arithmetic(really this didn't happen till
Vieta anyways!) . . .and all this while managing to live for a
thousand years or more; well, I think you get the point.

Newton's invention of the Calculus is actually a good example of
what Mr Dirac had in mind; Galileo had the idea of average speed,
Fermat had done the tangent to the line thing, and his initial
teacher and as teacher to Isaac Newton as he could be Barrow had
much of the various calculus theorems like the derivative of the
sum, multiplication and so on; but, Barrow could not see how to put
it all together; even here, Newton actually could not see how to do
all of the basic calculus students learn today; he did not know
rolle's theorem and the proving of all the basic derivative
formula's by means of limits that Cauchy did in the eighteen
hundreds.

What to make of it all? Just goes to show you that you can never
confine mankind in a finite box and expect to learn the universe
(kind of a necessity for us humans I would say!