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[笔记，科技] Stigler\'s law of eponymy 斯蒂格勒命名定律（关联：他人的介绍）

已有 882 次阅读 2025-4-22 22:49 |个人分类:历史 - 人物|系统分类:科普集锦

[笔记，科技] Stigler's law of eponymy 斯蒂格勒命名定律（关联：他人的介绍）

斯蒂格勒 Stephen M. Stigler stigler.jpg

斯蒂格勒 Stephen M. Stigler, 1941-08-10 ~

https://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/stigler.jpg

https://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~stigler/

https://stat.uchicago.edu/people/profile/stephen-m-stigler/

The University of Chicago 美国芝加哥大学统计学教授

以下对应英文的汉语，来自机器翻译。

一、原文：Stigler’s Law of Eponymy, 1980

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2164-0947.1980.tb02775.x

For “Stigler’s Law of Eponymy” in its simplest form is this: “No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.”

因为最简单的“斯蒂格勒命名定律”是这样的：“没有任何科学发现是以其原始发现者的名字命名的。”

a discovery may in fact be named after someone who could not be reasonably counted as even one of its discoverers, much less the original one.

事实上，一个发现可能是以一个甚至不能被合理地算作其发现者之一的人的名字命名的，更不用说最初的发现者了。

Thus in my own field of mathematical statistics it can be found that Laplace employed Fourier transforms in print before Fourier published on the topic, that Lagrange presented Laplace transforms before Laplace began his scientific career, that Poisson published the Cauchy distribution in 1824, 29 years before Cauchy touched on it in an incidental manner, and that Bienaymé stated and proved the Chebychev inequality a decade before and in greater generality than Chebychev’s first work on the topic. (Incidentally, in each of these cases there is evidence, sometimes even citation, to show that the earlier work was known to the later worker before he embarked on his investigation. These were not instances of multiple discovery.)

因此，在我自己的数理统计领域，可以发现拉普拉斯在傅里叶发表关于这个主题的文章之前就在印刷品中使用了傅里叶变换，拉格朗日在拉普拉斯开始他的科学生涯之前提出了拉普拉斯变换，泊松在1824年发表了柯西分布，比柯西偶然触及它早了29年，Bienaymé在十年前就陈述并证明了切比雪夫不等式，并且比切比雪夫第一次关于这个话题的工作更具普遍性。（顺便说一句，在这些案件中，都有证据，有时甚至是引用，表明后来的工人在开始调查之前就知道早期的工作。这些不是多次发现的情况。）

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to many colleagues for their comments and criticisms in the course of the preparation of this paper. I particularly wish to thank Stephen Cole, William H. Kruskal, and George J. Stigler for their efforts (some in vain) to correct me where they believed I have gone astray.

致谢

我感谢许多同事在编写本文件过程中提出的意见和批评。我特别要感谢斯蒂芬·科尔、威廉·H·克鲁斯卡尔和乔治·J·斯蒂格勒为纠正他们认为我误入歧途的地方所做的努力（有些是徒劳的）。

二、其它的资料阅读笔记

主要来自：Stigler's law of eponymy explained

https://everything.explained.today/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy/

2.1 马克·吐温 Mark Twain

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

发明一台电报、一台蒸汽机、一台留声机、一张照片、一部电话或任何其他重要的东西需要一千个人——最后一个人获得了荣誉，我们忘记了其他人。他只加了一点点——这就是他所做的。这些客观的教训应该告诉我们，从智力出发的所有事物的九十九个部分都是抄袭，纯粹而简单；这一课应该让我们谦虚。但没有什么能做到这一点。

2.2 斯蒂格勒的父亲 George Joseph Stigler, 1982年诺贝尔经济奖得主

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1982/summary/

Stephen Stigler's father, the economist George Stigler, also examined the process of discovery in economics. He said, "If an earlier, valid statement of a theory falls on deaf ears, and a later restatement is accepted by the science, this is surely proof that the science accepts ideas only when they fit into the then-current state of the science." He gave several examples in which the original discoverer was not recognized as such.[4] Similar arguments were made in regards to accepted ideas relative to the state of science by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

斯蒂芬·斯蒂格勒的父亲、经济学家乔治·斯蒂格勒也研究了经济学中的发现过程。他说：“如果一个理论的早期有效陈述被置若罔闻，而后来的重述被科学界接受，这无疑证明了科学只有在符合当时科学现状的情况下才接受这些想法。”他举了几个例子，说明最初的发现者没有得到认可。[4] 托马斯·库恩在《科学革命的结构》一书中对与科学状态相关的公认观点也提出了类似的论点。

2.3 马太效应 The Matthew effect

The Matthew effect was coined by Robert K. Merton to describe how eminent scientists get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is similar, so that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous. Merton notes: The effect applies specifically to women through the Matilda effect.

马太效应是由罗伯特·K·默顿创造的，用来描述杰出的科学家如何比相对不为人知的研究人员获得更多的荣誉，即使他们的工作相似，因此通常会给予已经出名的研究人员荣誉。默顿指出：这种效应通过玛蒂尔达效应专门适用于女性。

2.4 Boyer' law 博耶定律 (Carl Benjamin Boyer, Hubert Collings Kennedy), 1972年

Boyer's law was named by Hubert Kennedy in 1972. It says, "Mathematical formulas and theorems are usually not named after their original discoverers" and was named after Carl Boyer, whose book A History of Mathematics contains many examples of this law. Kennedy observed that "it is perhaps interesting to note that this is probably a rare instance of a law whose statement confirms its own validity".[5]

博耶定律是由休伯特·肯尼迪于1972年提出的。它说，“数学公式和定理通常不会以其最初的发现者命名”，而是以卡尔·博耶的名字命名，他的《数学史》一书中包含了许多这一定律的例子。肯尼迪指出，“值得注意的是，这可能是一项罕见的法律，其声明证实了其自身的有效性”。5.

2.5 怀特海 Alfred North Whitehead, 1956

（1）"Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it" is an adage attributed to Alfred North Whitehead.[6]

阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特海的一句格言是：“所有重要的事情都曾被一个没有发现它的人说过”。6.

https://everything.explained.today/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy/

（2）Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

所有重要的事情之前都被一个没有发现它的人说过。

--- Quoted in J R Newman, The World of Mathematics (New York 1956).

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whitehead/quotations/

三、Stigler and “His” Law of Eponymy 斯蒂格勒与“他的”命名法

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/02/stiglers-law-eponymy/

To make sure we’re all the same page: Stigler’s Law, which explicitly posits that the original creator of an idea never gets credit for it, a notion previously studied by Merton, was named after the wrong person (Stigler) on purpose and credited to someone else (Merton) so that it was a proof of itself. And around the same time Merton had been exploring the idea and about a decade before Stigler’s Law was so named, a mathematician (Kennedy), independently put forth more or less the same law he also purposefully ironically named after the first scientist he knew about that had popularly noted this misattribution phenomenon in academia (Boyer). So, not once, but twice, Stigler’s Law became proof of itself, while simultaneously Merton’s Matthew Effect, which helped inspire it, is on full display in the ordeal.

为了确保我们都在同一页上：斯蒂格勒定律明确规定，一个想法的最初创造者永远不会得到认可，默顿之前研究过的一个概念，是以错误的人（斯蒂格勒）的名字命名的，并归功于其他人（默顿），因此它本身就是一个证明。大约在默顿一直在探索这一想法的同时，在斯蒂格勒定律被如此命名的大约十年前，一位数学家（肯尼迪）独立提出了或多或少相同的定律，他也故意讽刺地以他所知道的第一位在学术界普遍注意到这种错误归因现象的科学家（博耶）的名字命名。所以，不是一次，而是两次，斯蒂格勒定律成为了自己的证据，同时，帮助激发它的默顿马太效应在这场磨难中得到了充分的体现。

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/02/stiglers-law-eponymy/

参考资料：

[1] Stephen M. Stigler. Stigler’s Law of Eponymy [J]. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1980, 39(1): 147-157

doi: 10.1111/j.2164-0947.1980.tb02775.x

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2164-0947.1980.tb02775.x

[2] Everything Explained.Today, 2015+, Stigler's law of eponymy explained

https://everything.explained.today/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy/

[3] Diamond . Arthur M. Jr. . December 2005 . 639–640 . Measurement, incentives, and constraints in Stigler's economics of science . The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought . 12 . 4 . 10.1080/09672560500370292 . 154618308 . 12 January 2015. (Link is to Art Diamond's personal web site.)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09672560500370292

[4] Hubert Collings Kennedy. January 1972 . Who discovered Boyer's Law? . The American Mathematical Monthly . 79 . 1 . 66–67 .

doi: 10.1080/00029890.1972.11992989

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029890.1972.11992989

[5] Alfred North Whitehead - MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whitehead/quotations/

[6] Stigler and “His” Law of Eponymy, 2016-02-17, Today I Found Out

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/02/stiglers-law-eponymy/