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The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention)〔() "Are Inventions Inevitable? Simultaneous Invention and the Incremental Nature of Discovery", in ''The Long Nose: Technology and the Economy'', 25 November 2012.〕 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. ==Multiples== When Nobel laureates are announced annually—especially in physics, chemistry, physiology-or-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 on 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.〔 Reprinted in Robert K. Merton, ''The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations'', Chicago, University of Chicago Press,1973, pp. 371–82. ()〕 "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 by Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others, described by A. Rupert Hall; 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.〔Tori Reeve, ''Down House: the Home of Charles Darwin'', pp. 40-41.〕〔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), and magnetism (discovered independently in Greece, China, and India).〕 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.〔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.〕 Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton" — a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together.〔Robert K. Merton, ''On Social Structure and Science'', p. 307.〕 Sommer has introduced the term "nulltiple" to describe a scientific discovery that is suppressed or blocked from publication or dissemination via normal scientific channels. Nulltiple discoveries are often made serendipitously as part of an otherwise directed research program. As such, they are less likely to be re-discovered by others as is the case with many multiples. Sometimes nulltiples do eventually come to light, but often within circumstances of historical research rather than as a primary scientific disclosure. Merton's hypothesis is also discussed extensively in Harriet Zuckerman's ''Scientific Elite''.〔Harriet Zuckerman, ''Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States'', New York, The Free Press, 1979.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「multiple discovery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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