I’m not sure that I agree entirely with your framing here, yes, you do at some point need to correct your assumptions with external evidence. But clearly there have been many individuals throughout history who have had incredibly out sized impact in their respective fields as a consequence of the quality of their reasoning.
Biology resists reasoning. Chaotic interactions make prediction via reasoning uncertain. Simulation, not reasoning can get closer, and could be leveraged by AI, but empirical verification is probably no optional.
That could just be selection bias. How about all the brilliant people we don't know about cause their theories did not match experimental data? Doesn't matter if their reasoning quality is top notch
