When did the first homo sapiens exist? Ideas like species evolve. Saying there are no original ideas seems to me an attempt to glibly capture something quite fundamental.
replyI don't disagree with your premise, but I'd argue that saying "there are no original ideas" in the context of a discussion of plagiarism is needlessly reductive. Even though I think I mostly agree with the author here, I think there are legitimate counterarguments that can be made; equating all of the ways someone can cite or build upon an idea with copying something word-for-word and claiming it's your own is not one of them though.
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replyDid those original thoughts not build upon all the original thoughts that came before them?
replySure they build upon them, you still need to add your 1% of original insight. There was a first person to realise that you could make fire by rubbing two sticks together.
replyIs my house a copy of the dirt it's on top of? Did the people who built my house build the dirt? There's a difference between "building upon" an idea and trying to claim you built the idea itself
replyTechnically one of {Newton, Leibniz} was first, but you're missing GP's point
replyNo, I think I just find it reductive. The fact that some ideas are independently thought by multiple people does not feel like a compelling argument for normalizing copying someone else's work verbatim and trying to pass it off as your own.
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