What would be the point for an author to make a discovery if others did not come to fertilise it, modify it if necessary and most importantly, to propagate it?

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 441 to 442 (in French)
July 2nd, 1850

In this letter, Frédéric Bastiat recognises some weaknesses in the pamphlet The Law that is about to be published.

He stops worrying (rightly) with today’s quote whereby he assesses that knowledge does not exist in a vacuum but is an amalgamation of knowledge and intellectual exchanges among various people who are alive but also with those who are dead and those who are yet to be born. It is interesting to note that he uses the term “fertilise” (féconder), which reminds me of the expression “ideas have sex” used by Matt Ridley in his introduction to The Rational Optimist in order to describe how innovation works.