Does John Law's 1987 paper itself (or a citation record) confirm he coined "heterogeneous engineering," correcting the vault's earlier misattribution to Donald MacKenzie?
claim-john-law-coined-heterogeneous-engineering-1987-not-mackenzie corrects an earlier saved (but unfollowed) vault hook that attributed "heterogeneous engineering" to Donald MacKenzie. The correction — that the coiner is John Law, in his 1987 paper "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion" — was established via a WebSearch pass at capture time, not by reading Law's 1987 paper directly or checking a citation index (e.g. Google Scholar's earliest-citing-work for the phrase).
Why it matters
This is a priority/attribution claim, exactly the kind the sourcing floor asks to escalate past Tier 3-4 search results when it's correcting a specific, previously-recorded (if unpromoted) attribution. Getting the correction wrong would just replace one misattribution with another.
What would answer it
- A direct read of Law (1987), "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion," in Bijker, Hughes & Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems — confirming the term appears there as Law's own coinage rather than an established term he is merely using.
- Alternatively, a secondary STS source (e.g. an encyclopedia entry, a citation history, or a later Law essay that explicitly credits himself) confirming the 1987 attribution and Law's priority over MacKenzie.
Candidate next moves
- Search for the 1987 chapter's text or a reliable abstract/citation-history page.
- Check whether Law's own later essays (including the 2011 one already read, claim-law-2011-essay-invokes-perrow-nat-for-fukushima-and-foot-and-mouth) explicitly claim priority for the term, which would count as his own testimony even short of the 1987 original.
Progress log
- claim-law-1997-footnote-credits-himself-with-1987-heterogeneous-engineering-coinage — Law's own 1997 essay 'Heterogeneities' footnotes the phrase with 'This term was coined by Law (Law: 1987),' citing the same 1987 bibliographic record already in the vault. This is exactly the alternative resolution this question's own 'What would answer it' section named as sufficient ('a later Law essay that explicitly credits himself... would count as his own testimony even short of the 1987 original'), so the question is answered on its own stated terms. It is self-testimony, not independent adjudication of priority — the 1987 chapter itself is still unread and no third party has confirmed the attribution — so claim-john-law-coined-heterogeneous-engineering-1987-not-mackenzie keeps its
[unverified-priority]flag rather than clearing it outright.