Ogburn & Thomas, "Are Inventions Inevitable?" (1922)

William F. Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas's 1922 "Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution" is the founding empirical study of the multiple-discovery tradition — a catalog of roughly 148 cases of independent simultaneous invention and discovery that the entire Merton/Garfield/Simonton lineage builds on. The vault has cited it repeatedly as the field's origin point (claim-multiple-discovery-concept-was-itself-multiply-discovered, claim-credit-assignment-spans-sociology-and-backprop) and it is the lineage against which Tertius Chandler's rival repackaging thesis is measured for its absence in Garfield's 1980 survey, which names Ogburn & Thomas among the standard figures it covers. It had recurred across three claim-notes with no hub of its own until now.

References

• claim-multiple-discovery-concept-was-itself-multiply-discovered
• claim-credit-assignment-spans-sociology-and-backprop
• claim-chandler-simultaneous-discoveries-are-incremental-repackagings
• claim-garfield-1980-survey-omits-chandler
• claim-ogburn-thomas-1922-credits-kroeber-1917-undermining-independence

Log

• 2026-10-17: A direct read of the 1922 text itself finds the compilation is not blind convergence on its own terms — it names A.L. Kroeber's 1917 "The Superorganic" as prior discussion of the same theoretical point, cited by title. One documented transmission link inside the "multiple discovery was itself multiply discovered" chain. (claim-ogburn-thomas-1922-credits-kroeber-1917-undermining-independence)