The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention) is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors. The concept of multiple discovery opposes a traditional view—the "heroic theory" of invention and discovery. Multiple discovery is analogous to

convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last comm ...

biological evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certai ...

Multiples

When

Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes (, ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in th ...

are announced annually—especially in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, and economics—increasingly, in the given field, rather than just a single laureate, there are two, or the maximally permissible three, who often have independently made the same discovery. Historians and sociologists have remarked the occurrence, in

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

, of "multiple independent discovery".

Robert K. Merton Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as the ...

defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other. Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton"—a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together. As Merton said, "Sometimes 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." Commonly cited examples of multiple independent discovery are the 17th-century independent formulation of

calculus Calculus is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations. Originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the ...

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others; the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and others; and the theory of evolution of species, independently advanced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. What holds for discoveries, also goes for inventions. Examples are the blast furnace (invented independently in China, Europe and Africa), the crossbow (invented independently in China, Greece, Africa, northern Canada, and the Baltic countries),, magnetism (discovered independently in Greece, China, and India), the computer mouse (both rolling and Optical mouse, optical), Claims to the first powered flight, powered flight, and the Invention of the telephone, telephone. Multiple independent discovery, however, is not limited to only a few historic instances involving giants of scientific research. Merton believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the ''common'' pattern in science.

Mechanism

Multiple discoveries in the history of science provide evidence for evolutionary models of science and technology, such as memetics (the study of self-replicating units of culture), evolutionary epistemology (which applies the concepts of

to study of the growth of human knowledge), and cultural selection theory (which studies sociological and cultural evolution in a Darwinian manner). A recombinant DNA, recombinant-DNA-inspired "paradigm of paradigms" has been posited, that describes a mechanism of "recombinant conceptualization". This paradigm predicates that a new concept arises through the crossing of pre-existing concepts and facts. This is what is meant when one says that a scientist or artist has been "influenced by" another—etymology, etymologically, that a concept of the latter's has "flowed into" the mind of the former. Not every new concept so formed will be viable: adapting Social Darwinism, social Darwinist Herbert Spencer's phrase, only the fittest concepts survive. Multiple independent discovery and invention, like discovery and invention generally, have been fostered by the evolution of means of communication: roads, vehicles, sailing ship, sailing vessels, writing, printing, institutions of education, reliable postal services,Colin McGinn, "Groping Toward the Mind" (review of George Makari, ''Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind'', Norton, 656 pp.; and A.C. Grayling, ''The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind'', Bloomsbury, 351 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books'', vol. LXIII, no. 11 (June 23, 2016), p. 68. telegraphy, and mass media, including the internet. Johannes Gutenberg, Gutenberg's invention of printing (which itself involved a number of discrete inventions) substantially facilitated the transition from the Middle Ages to modern history, modern times. All these communication developments have catalyzed and accelerated the process of recombinant conceptualization, and thus also of multiple independent discovery. List of multiple discoveries, Multiple independent discoveries show an increased incidence beginning in the 17th century. This may accord with the thesis of British philosopher A.C. Grayling that the 17th century was crucial in the creation of the modern world view, freed from the shackles of religion, the occult, and uncritical faith in the authority of Aristotle. Grayling speculates that Europe's Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), with the concomitant breakdown of authority, made freedom of thought and open debate possible, so that "modern science... rests on the heads of millions of dead." He also notes "the importance of the development of a reliable postal service... in enabling savants... to be in scholarly communication.... [T]he cooperative approach, first recommended by Francis Bacon, was essential to making science open to peer review and public verification, and not just a matter of the lone [individual] issuing... idiosyncratic pronouncements."

Humanities

The paradigm of recombinant conceptualization (see above)—more broadly, of recombinant occurrences—that explains multiple discovery in science and the arts, also elucidates the phenomenon of historic recurrence, wherein similar events are noted in the history, histories of countries widely separated in time and geography. It is the recurrence of patterns that lends a degree of prediction, prognostic power—and, thus, additional scientific validity—to the findings of history.

The arts

Lamb and Easton, and others, have argued that science and art are similar with regard to multiple discovery. When two scientists independently make the same discovery, their papers are not word-for-word identical, but the core ideas in the papers are the same; likewise, two novelists may independently write novels with the same core themes, though their novels are not identical word-for-word.

Civility

After

and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had exchanged information on their respective systems of

in the 1670s, Newton in the first edition of his ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Principia'' (1687), in a ''scholium'', apparently accepted Leibniz's independent discovery of calculus. In 1699, however, a Swiss mathematician suggested to Britain's Royal Society that Leibniz had borrowed his calculus from Newton. In 1705 Leibniz, in an anonymous review of Newton's ''Opticks'', implied that Newton's ''Newton's notation, fluxions'' (Newton's term for differential calculus) were an adaptation of Leibniz's calculus. In 1712 the Royal Society appointed a committee to examine the documents in question; the same year, the Society published a report, written by Newton himself, asserting his priority. Soon after Leibniz died in 1716, Newton denied that his own 1687 ''Principia'' scholium "allowed [Leibniz] the invention of the ''calculus differentialis'' independently of my own"; and the third edition of Newton's ''Principia'' (1726) omitted the tell-tale scholium. It is now accepted that Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus independently of each other. In another classic case of multiple discovery, the two discoverers showed more civility. By June 1858 Charles Darwin had completed over two-thirds of his ''On the Origin of Species'' when he received a startling letter from a naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, 13 years his junior, with whom he had corresponded. The letter summarized Wallace's theory of natural selection, with conclusions identical to Darwin's own. Darwin turned for advice to his friend Charles Lyell, the foremost geologist of the day. Lyell proposed that Darwin and Wallace prepare a joint communication to the scientific community. Darwin being preoccupied with his mortally ill youngest son, Lyell enlisted Darwin's closest friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Joseph Hooker, director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kew Gardens, and together on 1 July 1858 they presented to the Linnean Society a joint paper that brought together Wallace's abstract with extracts from Darwin's earlier, 1844 essay on the subject. The paper was also published that year in the Society's journal. Neither the public reading of the joint paper nor its publication attracted interest; but Wallace, "admirably free from envy or jealousy," had been content to remain in Darwin's shadow.

References and notes

External links

"Annals of Innovation: In the Air: Who says big ideas are rare?"
Malcolm Gladwell, ''The New Yorker'', May 12, 2008
The Technium: Simultaneous Invention
Kevin Kelly, May 9, 2008 * , Peter Turney, January 15, 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Multiple Discovery Discovery and invention controversies Heuristics History of scientific method Innovation Theories of history