In any event, I know that personally, I do make intellectual progress over time. My doubts are mostly about whether the institution of legal scholarship is “pushing the ball forward” in some metaphysical way (a la science) or more about the business of adapting the institution of law to a constantly evolving social landscape.

On scholarship styles, this discussion of Galenson and Kuhn recalls the fox/hedgehog discussion a bit, doesn’t it? Normal science + plodding seeking = hedgehog, paradigm shift + finding = fox, perhaps?

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2007/07/the_raging_fox.html

Still, I have to admit that I suffer (or benefit) from the continuing sense that I am figuring something out, that I’m working through that question in a series of papers and projects over time, and that what I’m gradually figuring out isn’t a pure social construct or a series of one-act rhetorical exercises, a la practical lawyering. Galenson-plus-Gladwell-equals-Kuhn up to a point, but I’m tempted by the proposition that Galenson is on to something in his own right, even in an area as complicated or mundane (take your pick) as legal scholarship.

I’d situate our classic debates about methodology in the “epistemology” category—including the neverending dispute over the proper balance between doctrinalism and interdisciplinary work.

A similar tension exists in “transmission”–between a hierarchically organized focus on “top” journals and a conference circuit/blogosphere where individuals in given fields get to know one another’s work.

Power is a tricky topic. While people want to be known as one or another type of innovator, they probably don’t want to be known as powerful vel non.

So to come back to your Kuhnian point–the innovator is really only necessary when normal science is failing. Is it failing in legal scholarship presently?

I haven’t read these books, so take these comments with a grain of salt…

The thing that concerns me most in this discussion is how we pick out the Picassos and the Cezannes of the world. Arguably, the difference between the “famous breakthroughs” of Picasso and Cezanne can be traced to the willingness of current society, and particular key people in the past, to promote these artists and establish their fame.

In other words, Picasso and Cezanne are early and late geniuses not so much because of what they did respectively, but because we have now decided that this is the case.

So yes, I agree that the dynamic of Gladwell’s interest in writing about Galenson is a useful counterpoint to what Galenson had to say in the first place (or Gladwell now has to say about Galenson).

p.s. With regard to the applications in science, where laws of nature can be discovered and used for new inventions, the claim about discovery and genius becomes more interesting.

But I wonder if STS people would see this as more or less rehashing Thomas Kuhn’s arguments. According to Kuhn, normal science is an inherently conservative (but required) affair, whereas paradigm shifts often go unrecognized at first due to their rejection of the dominant orthodoxy. But resistance to things that challenge normal science is inescapably a part and parcel of normal science itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn