Identical scientific ideas can cascade in one country but stall in another

Evidence

As with cascades in technology, cascades in the social sciences are not selfexplaining. In Britain, the economist A. D. Roy produced a mathematical analysis of portfolio selection (Roy 1952) that was contemporaneous with and similar to Markowitz’s, while the statistician M. G. Kendall (1953) put forward the view of price changes as random walks. Unlike Markowitz’s work, however, Roy’s was not carried on by the equivalent of a Sharpe. Kendall’s work was built upon, but in the United States, by Samuelson, not in the United Kingdom. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1094

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader sociology of science literature on how institutional conditions explain why equivalent discoveries take off in some places and not others. — connects to: Societies absorb new ideas only when those ideas do not threaten core beliefs — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1397; A scientific framework’s presuppositions are culturally and historically conditioned — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 148
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why exactly did Roy’s parallel contribution to portfolio selection fail to get the equivalent of a Sharpe carrying it forward?

Broader Connections

• Societies absorb new ideas only when those ideas do not threaten core beliefs #qualifies (0.78) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1397
• A scientific framework’s presuppositions are culturally and historically conditioned #expands (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 148