Brand names in psychology

‘The “brand names” tend to make difficult the analysis and comparison of these mechanisms or the exchange of knowledge between research groups. One can argue that it has caused and causes an enormous amount of duplication of effort. Physicists did not divide quantum mechanics into the Heisenberg Brand, the Schrodinger Brand,and the Dirac Brand, but analyzed in detail the relations among these and use one or the other according to their computational power in particular situations. When specific “brand name” choices have arisen (wave v. particle theories of light, Ampere’s v. Faraday”s theories of electromagnetism, phlogisten v. oxygen theories of production), they used experimental techniques to analyze both similarities and differences and to sort them out.’

Herbert Simon (spotted over here)