Historians and sociologists have remarked the occurrence, in science, of "multiple independent discovery". Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.[1] "Sometimes", writes Merton, "the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make a new discovery which, unknown to him, somebody else has made years before."[2]
Commonly cited examples of multiple independent discovery are the 17th-century independent formulation of calculus by Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others, described by A. Rupert Hall;[3] the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and others; and the theory of the evolution of species, independently advanced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Multiple independent discovery, however, is not limited to such famous historic instances. Merton believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the common pattern in science.[4]
Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton"—a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together.[5]
The distinction may blur as science becomes increasingly collaborative.[6]
A distinction is drawn between a discovery and an invention, as discussed for example by Bolesław Prus.[7] However, discoveries and inventions are inextricably related, in that discoveries lead to inventions, and inventions facilitate discoveries; and since the same phenomenon of multiplicity occurs in relation to both discoveries and inventions, this article lists both multiple discoveries and multiple inventions.
- ^ Merton, Robert K. (December 1963). "Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science". European Journal of Sociology. 4 (2): 237–282. doi:10.1017/S0003975600000801. JSTOR 23998345. S2CID 145650007. Reprinted in: Merton, Robert K. (15 September 1996). On Social Structure and Science. University of Chicago Press. pp. 305–. ISBN 978-0-226-52070-4.
- ^ Merton, Robert K. (1973). The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. University of Chicago Press. p. 371. ISBN 978-0-226-52092-6.
- ^ A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
- ^ Robert K. Merton, "Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery: a Chapter in the Sociology of Science", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 105: 470–86, 1961. Reprinted in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 343–70.
- ^ Robert K. Merton, On Social Structure and Science, p. 307.
- ^ Sarah Lewin Frasier and Jen Christiansen, "Nobel Connections: A deep dive into science's greatest prize", Scientific American, vol. 331, no. 3 (October 2024), pp. 72–73.
- ^ Bolesław Prus, O odkryciach i wynalazkach (On Discoveries and Inventions): A Public Lecture Delivered on 23 March 1873 by Aleksander Głowacki [Bolesław Prus], Passed by the [Russian] Censor (Warsaw, 21 April 1873), Warsaw, Printed by F. Krokoszyńska, 1873, p. 12.