When we talk about scientific and philosophical ideas, we tend to attach the names of people who have gotten historical recognition for working on them. This is especially noticeable in physics and mathematics, where it seems like every modern concept is named after someone. Keplerian orbits, Maxwell equations, Riemann tensors, Coulomb force, and it goes on and on. Sometimes, it gets ridiculous, as more and more names are attached to the idea. Just look at the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method for solving differential equations! On the one hand, it makes sense to recognize the work people contribute to human knowledge, but it can get tiresome when, for example, an old physicist interrupts his train of thought to talk about the individual who did research on the subject, along with details about their life. When discussing how stars explode, I am not interested in which university Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar did his research!
On this blog, I talk about all kinds of philosophy, from the nature of reality to morality to consciousness to philosophy of science. These musings are not simply regurgitations of the ideas of famous names from history, but my own thoughts on each matter. Sometimes I discover that my ideas have been said by famous thinkers, like David Hume, G. E. Moore, or Stuart Russell. But other times, it legitimately seems that I am going into unexplored territory. Yet, unless I somehow publish a bestselling nonfiction book or an academic paper that gets a lot of attention, the credit for my ideas will go to someone else. In order to be recognized, it is not enough to be smart and original, you also have to play the competitive institutional game, and I am simply not interested in that.
Just as my ideas have been said before or will be said in the future by others remembered by history, most, if not all, of the great ideas of history have been said by many others throughout the world and across time. Take for instance the above-mentioned WKB method. If you go to its Wikipedia page, you will find the names of three people who used it a hundred years before Wentzel, Kramers, and Brillouin.
The popular version of this is the one-liner quote. A famous person once said, “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” Such a wise quote. We can learn so much by being curious and exploring, and the formal education system can stifle that instinct within us. Do you know who said it? You can google it if you want the name of the historical figure it’s attributed to, but I can guarantee it has also been said by thousands upon thousands of others, many of whom have never heard of that person. Being wise does not get you into the memory of history. Being famous causes the wise things you say to be remembered by history. Thus, quotes are revealed for what they are: memes, granted longevity by being institutionalized into the narrative of history. Instead of using the quotes of others to supplement my discussions, I prefer to explain and argue them in my own words from my own understanding.
Ideas about nature and philosophy do not belong to any one person. The space of thought and reality belongs to everyone. If you’re writing a professional academic paper or book, it is important to cite all of the current research into the topics you’re talking about, so that your readers know you understand your field of study and aren’t making things up. But people can and do think about ideas without becoming experts in the formal structure of their history. Most people aren’t trained, or don’t have the skills, or time, or interest, to engage with the academic institution that way. We should all be able to discuss the Hard Problem of consciousness without having to constantly refer to David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, and Rene Descartes.
When so many academic subjects have term after term named after people, it makes them hard to learn. It would be so much easier if that jargon were replaced with descriptive names. Keplerian orbits could be called classical gravity orbits. Maxwell equations could be (and sometimes are) called electromagnetic field equations. The WKB method could be called the shallow rising potential approximation. In addition to making the subjects easier to learn, it would make writing science fiction easier. As a writer, I keep running into problems when the concepts I am trying to use are named after historical figures from Earth, whereas my characters have no connection to our planet.
Finally, seeing someone’s name attached to an idea can turn people off from the idea before they even know what it is. For instance, Richard Dawkins is a prominent evolutionary biologist, contributing lots of groundbreaking ideas to the field. But he is also a prominent atheist, and not very polite about it. So if I want to talk about something biological, like extended phenotypes, and I mention that they were put forth by Dawkins, a certain number of people are going to tune out right then and there.
These are the reasons why, when I talk about scientific or philosophical ideas, I focus on the ideas themselves, and rarely mention the historical figures associated with them. Sometimes I do, if it makes it easy to look up, or if describing it would cause more confusion than simply using the name. For instance, it is much easier to say, “Dunning-Kruger effect” than, “the cognitive bias where people confidently make a claim, not realizing they know next-to-nothing about the subject they are talking about.” Still, any time I do shorthand like this, I will take time to explain what it means first.
Works of art and creativity are an exception, of course. People who work hard on and pour passion into novels and music and cinema and theater and sculpting and painting deserve recognition for their contributions to exploring the human spirit. I will happily talk about Brandon Sanderson, Isaac Arthur, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lena Raine, and multitudes of other creators whose unique works I think are phenomenal and worth recognizing. The only times I won’t mention creators are when their works are embarrassingly bad.
There are other reasons not to mention people associated with ideas. When I find myself arguing against something especially ignorant or silly, I avoid using people’s names in order to spare them from embarrassment and loss of reputation, or, if they are historical, out of respect for the dead. For instance, if someone sticks to the argument that biological evolution is disproved by entropy or irreducible complexity, they show only that they don’t understand evolution and thermodynamics nearly as well as other people do. We all believe some amount of strange and unreasonable things, and it is kinder to view the positive in each other, rather than the negative.
I also avoid using names for petty crimes and bad behaviors, because one of the reasons people do shocking and criminal things is because it is a way to be seen. If we don’t give them personalized attention, that is one less incentive to commit these acts. The exception is for powerful symbols of evil, like Hitler and Stalin, from whom the lessons of history do much more to prevent repetition than ignoring them would.
These are the reasons behind when I do and don’t mention people’s names on this blog. Of course, I’m not perfect, and I’ve been known to break all of these rules. Nevertheless, I do my best to focus on the ideas rather than the names associated with them, and to save face for people associated with embarrassing ideas or creations.
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