I see the reasonings of both of your points. To me it seems in the old days, there was a lot of hindrance in reaching your potential therefore for those few to become geniuses, you truly had to be exceptional and since there was so few, your impact would be tremendous.
Now compare that to the modern day, where I'd say a lot higher percentage of people are hitting their potential as a genius. Therefore, a lot more people are coming up with new novel things, but since a lot of the easy major milestones in sciences have been attained, the impact of those single individual geniuses is much smaller.
Modern age Newton could be just a very good AI researcher from England. It's just impossible for humans to have devolved so much that the genius of the previous generations would be so much different than we have today.
Now compare that to the modern day, where I'd say a lot higher percentage of people are hitting their potential as a genius. Therefore, a lot more people are coming up with new novel things, but since a lot of the easy major milestones in sciences have been attained, the impact of those single individual geniuses is much smaller.
Modern age Newton could be just a very good AI researcher from England. It's just impossible for humans to have devolved so much that the genius of the previous generations would be so much different than we have today.