"The ancients stole all of our best ideas." - Mark Twain
It is extremely hard to be original - to be original you have to have an idea that someone else did not. Even if you come up with an idea independently, how do you know if it is original or not? In science publishing gets you some rights to say "original", but often the ideas are "in the air" and someone would soon find the particular discovery, even if you did not. Looking at the history of science we see a lot of things that are squarely stated as being Dr. X's idea arose near simultaneously (as many were scrambling after the same prize), or even before but not developed as much or as clearly or communicated as well, and (I suspect/hope, rarely) sometimes was stolen by Dr. X [0].
So we have a measurement problem - even if you are original, how can you tell? In addition to this a lot of "original" ideas are essentially assured: once the time is ripe for an idea it will be followed, pursued, and found. In that case, does it even matter very much? Sure it is nice to claim "the prize", but it is not earth shattering - if dozens to hundreds of others where hot on the trail and close behind [1].
So what? Do not worry about being original, and do not focus so tightly on "big men" [2] of the past. Often people we think are gods among men are simply those who got there slightly first, presented slightly better, aggressively defended their claim to the idea, or went slightly farther. Do we really think that we would not have discovered the structure of DNA if the Nobel prize winners didn't do their work? [3]
It is more interesting to be independent. This is fairly easy to do - and even if you end up saying something that others think, have discussed, or had thought you bring your own background and perspective to the table. You also hone your thinking and creativity, making it more likely you will - perhaps - be original.
For a good example, see Paul Graham's essays - I don't think I've read anything "original" in his work, but from the writing you can tell that the ideas are independently arrived at and they bring in an interesting twist [4]. You likely had similar thoughts of many of the essays, or know someone who does, or read works that address the same ideas but in a different framework or in a different field: but that doesn't matter, you will learn from the essays anyways. The background and interests of Paul will give you new insight on idea X, and thus you will understand idea X better than before, and you will most likely be presented with different data that support idea X.
The downfall of independent ideas is sometimes you often find your "original" idea is not so hot. But is this so bad? If already thought and demonstrated, this is evidence that your thinking is engaging reality. If it doesn't measure up, that's life, and at least you gained discipline and strength and some insight. If wrong - you learn: and this is how you really learn, by making mistakes. You can spend forever absorbing what others have said, found, demonstrated - or you can go out and do. Maybe you reinvent the wheel. Doesn't matter. A slightly different wheel likely will have a niche.
Original is over rated: much of it is inevitable, trivial, falsely focused on a single person versus a community that was bubbling over with ideas, and it is hard to really tell if you are original anyways [5]. But independent - that is the way to go. And since being "original" can move society forward, even if just a little faster, it is worth working on being an independent thinker - it will increase your odds of being original in an important way (finding something that many others are not about to find anyways, or finding it in a way that adds a different perspective).
Most importantly - being independent is fun. You engage ideas, people, artifacts, work - and it becomes play.
Notes:
[0] Or Dr. X had lower regard for honestly presenting data and its quality.
[1] Indeed, looking at it this way being the first can be a sign of lack of meta-imagination. One needs to look at the context to see if first is truly meaningful, or not. This not to discount the obvious work, imagination in tackling the project, and drive required.
[2] Or women, or groups, or books, or institutions, ... But frankly, most of the big people of the past and present are men.
[3] The interesting part of "original" is when you speed things up by a lot. I haven't looked at the history of DNA structure discovery too much, but it sounded like there was a speed up of - say - a couple of years. That is nothing in the scheme of things. Now Godel's theorems, that seems like a jump ahead. How long before someone else would have figured this out? I suspect a long time. Hell, physicists as a group still don't seem to be aware of his work more than 3/4th of a Century later and they are not exactly cut off from math and logic and his work is relevant for them.
[4] Like most interesting people you can guess that he (1) doesn't watch TV and (2) enjoys thinking and exploring ideas on his own. How do you tell a boring person? Look at the correlation of their opinion to the mass medias. Boring people consume opinion, interesting people fabricate their own opinion from their experience.
[5] Plus, how can you account for sheer luck? Lets say you are a grad student in field X. You pick are given a project Y to do. It has some odds of success. If your PhD project tanks, you will get your degree but goodbye future academic posting. If it does well, move on to postdoc project Z. Repeat. The "winners" obviously are talented and work very hard (in general) but this doesn't mean that the pruned in the race to the academic posting are any worse. I doubt we can improve much on the way things are, hey even Adam Smith discussed this and concluded you likely can't beat the incentives of the system as set up (rewarding success, and hence punishing failure - despite the obvious role of luck), but people should at least clearly understand this aspect. Surprisingly many do not seem to, even many profs do not seem to be aware of their good luck.
