Simultaneous Discovery on the OP-ED Page

What do pyramids, noodles, and calculus all have in common?

If you guessed that they are three beautiful and remarkable ancient technologies* that continue to have vast relevance in our society then I’m very pleased to have such a thoughtful and interesting person reading this blog. Sadly, that’s not the connection I’m looking for.

Pyramids, noodles, and calculus are three things that all came into this world by way of simultaneous discovery. That is, they were invented by a number of cultures and peoples completely separate of each other at about the same time.

Simultaneous discovery doesn’t happen exclusively in the concrete worlds of science and engineering; occasionally it manifests in the creative fields. A stunning example of this phenomenon was presented recently in the Op-Ed sections of three prominent national publications.

The death of Osama bin Laden is one of the biggest news stories of the year (in a year of very big news stories). As it was a rather polarizing event, it's only natural that opinion editors would dedicate some major real estate to the subject. Let’s take a look at some of the illustrations that were selected to appear in these journals:

Obviously there’s a strong similarity in these images. They're all really the same idea, just presented in slightly different ways: "erasing" bin Laden, be it with thinner or a hunk of pink rubber.

While the James Victore** piece was published first, I don’t suspect for a second that the other two images are copycats. Given the topical nature of the subject and the short production time that goes into making editorial art, I seriously doubt either Messrs Wright or Eksioglu had the chance to even see the Times piece before they submitted to their publishers.

This is just one of those fascinating moments of an idea being significant in its time; a moment of simultaneous discovery.

*Yeah, I'm going to count noodles as a “technology”; want to make something of it?

**Full disclosure: James Victore was sort of my mentor in college, although I don’t think that relationship colors my view of this work.