No scientist can know that he has made discovery before he has submitted it to the scientific community. An essential part of the process of discovery is the processing of the proposed hypothesis by the scientific community. Only when this processing is terminated with acceptance, is the process of discovery terminated. Hence, … the discover is the whole scientific community, rather than the scientist(s) who proposed the hypothesis.

When a scientist proposes an idea to the scientific community, he is not anymore in control over the idea, which is processed by the community synchronically and diachronically. The end product may solve a problem the originator of the idea has not dreamt about; in suggesting the idea, the originator was “blind” to the problem that is eventually solved in the process he initiated.