> People in humanities still haven’t understood that pretty mich everything in their fields is never all black or all white

I think most would be very open to be checked on their priors, but I would be very surprised if those could be designated a single color. In fact, the humanities revel in various hues and grays rather than stark contrasts.

> But which contributes more, they ask? Who gives a shit, really?

Funding agencies? Should they prioritize established researchers or newcomers? Should they support many smaller grant proposals or fewer large ones?

> it’s glaringly obvious that small contributions matter

Not at all obvious to me. What were the small contributions to e.g. the theory of gravity?

Well Newton made a huge contribution for sure, but to be able to state his theory he clearly had to use a bunch of math, not all of which came from reknowned mathematicians.

And Einstein didn’t pull out special relativity out of his brain alone. There were years of intense debate about the ether and things I totally forgot by now.

And take something like MOND, there has been tons of small contribution to try to prove / disprove / tweak the theory. If it ever comes out as something that holds, it’d be from a lot of people doing the grind.

The measurements of the movements of the stars and planets, perhaps?

I guess Kepler got by just using Brahe's observations, but for more modern explorations of gravity there's a boatload of people collecting data.

Humanities? Why'd you drag humanities into this?

(I agree with your point, by the way.)

the guy who coined the term Ortega Analysis is a sociologist. This is the branch of humanities that studies behaviors in a scientific setting.