Boyer's Law

[Gareth Branwyn]

FYI: The New Hacker's Dictionary (3rd Ed) does not list either Boyer's
Law or Stigler's Law. It does have a number of Laws popular among
hacker/comp sci types (such as Godwin's Law, Hanlon's Razor and
Parkinson's Law of Data already mentioned in this discussion).


"James A. Landau" wrote:
>
> The following sounds like a candidate for Fred Shapiro's collection of
> computer-related provers:
>
> Boyer's Law, named after the mathematician and mathematical historian Carl
> Boyer:
>
>      "Mathematical formulas and theorems are usually
>      not named after their original discoverers."
>
> This "law" was discussed on the Historia Matematica mailing list.
>
> <quote>
> It appears on page 469 of [Boyer's] History of Mathematics
> [1968].   After discussing the anticipation of the so-called Maclaurin's
> series by earlier workers, Boyer observed, "Clio, the muse of history,
> often is fickle in the matter of attaching names to theorems!"
>
> It was H.C. Kennedy who first called this "Boyer's Law:  Mathematical
> formulas and theorems are usually not named after their original
> discoverers."  Amer. Math. Monthly, 79:1 (1972), 66-67.  Kennedy also
> noted that "this is probably a rare instance of a law whose statement
> confirms its own validity."
>
> </quote>
>
> This is also known as
>
> <quote>
> ...Stigler's Law of Eponymy. This law, which in its simplest form states that
> "no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer," was so
> dubbed by Stephen
> Stigler in his recent book Statistics on the Table (Harvard). An immodest
> act of nomenclature? Not really. If Stigler's law is true, its very name
> implies that Stigler himself did not discover it. By explaining that the
> credit belongs instead to the great sociologist of science Robert K. Merton,
> Stigler not only wins marks for humility; he makes the law to which he has
> lent his name self-confirming.
>
> [reference: url http://www.linguafranca.com/0003/hypo.html]
> </quote>
>
> The discussion can be viewed in the HM archives at
> http://forum.swarthmore.edu/epigone/historia_matematica/
>
> select month March 2000 and the applicable threads are "Boyer's Law" (26
> March 2000) and  "L'Hopital, Pythagoras, Ptolemy and Hilbert" 17 March 2000.
> I have the entire (I think) discussion on my hard drive and I'll be happy to
> forward it to anyone who asks.
>
>        Jim Landau