Multiple Discoveries

Multiple Discoveries

There’s a powerful myth surrounding scientific discoveries and inventions. We imagine a solitary genius toiling away in their laboratory or workshop, performing experiment after experiment. Then one day, lightning strikes. They shout “Eureka!” as a new idea is born and the sum of human knowledge grows in one swoop. The idea gets named after them, they receive awards and patents, and their name goes in the history books. Should they have been felled by a falling piano a day prior, the idea may never have come into existence.

Except invention and discovery rarely work that way in reality. Most discoveries are the product of the cumulative work of many people inching toward the conclusion. Often multiple people or teams reach an equivalent result independently at around the same time. In the past it was possible for this to occur even without them being aware of one another’s work. Steel, slingshots, and the abacus are some of the many examples of inventions and discoveries that occurred in multiple places and multiple times in history.

Because everything arises from steps, not leaps, most things are invented in several places simultaneously when different people walk the same path, each unaware of the others.

—Kevin Ashton[5]

None of us live in full isolation from the ideas of others or the context of our time. New discoveries are the product of broad scientific and cultural landscapes, and often of recombining existing ideas.[6] We all draw upon what we are exposed to. The work of a researcher is the product of a lifetime spent absorbing the work of others.[7]

To give some of the many, many examples of simultaneous discovery, both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace conceived of natural selection without knowledge of each other’s work. Chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen in 1772 but didn’t publicize his discovery for three years, by which point two other chemists, Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, knew of its existence.[8] Both Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros presented similar methods for color photography in the 1860s.[9] Their work differed, as du Hauron used pigments and Cros favored dyes. Nettie Stevens and Edmund Beecher Wilson independently demonstrated that specialized chromosomes (X and Y) determine biological sex.[10] Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald’s research ended up sharing the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating that neutrinos have mass.[11]

Patent credit can obscure the many contributions behind an invention.[12] The person who receives a patent and profits from it may be one contributor among many. The account gives an example of earlier technical work: Taqī al-Dīn described components of a steam turbine in Syria in 1551, before an English patent for an early steam engine in 1698.[13] These are related developments, rather than necessarily identical inventions.

The phenomenon of multiple discoveries shows us how things can be equivalent even if not precisely identical. While they may differ in their details, the underlying principles and concepts are the same. They solve the same problem. In most cases, we credit a well-known discovery or invention only to the person who popularized it. We thus miss out on a rich understanding of the full process of innovation and often fail to hear the stories of those working outside the mainstream. In particular, female and minority scientists and inventors often have a hard time publicizing their work. Credit may go to someone else at a later date. Once a particular individual becomes well-known, they’re yet more likely to receive credit, even if someone else had the same idea previously.