Trivium: Naming laws of nature after their discoverers (and inventions after their inventors) is a Western peculiarity, at least according to Joe Henrich. From The WEIRDest People in the World:
with an increased focus on mental states, intellectuals began to associate new ideas, concepts, and insights with particular individuals, and to credit the first founders, observers, or inventors whenever possible. Our commonsensical inclination to associate inventions with their inventors has been historically and cross-culturally rare. This shift has been marked by the growth of eponymy in the naming of new lands (“America”), scientific laws (“Boyle’s Law”), ways of thinking (“Newtonian”), anatomical parts (“fallopian tubes”), and much more. After about 1600, Europeans even began to relabel ancient insights and inventions based on their purported founders or discoverers. “Pythagoras’s theorem,” for example, had been called the “Dulcarnon” (a word derived from an Arabic phrase for “two-horned,” which described Pythagoras’s accompanying diagram).
Trivium: Naming laws of nature after their discoverers (and inventions after their inventors) is a Western peculiarity, at least according to Joe Henrich. From The WEIRDest People in the World:
Not withstanding
:P
interesting!