What does a name mean in translation? Quine argued, famously, that the meaning of gavagai is indeterminate until you learn the language that uses that word to refer to its object. The case is similar with scientific texts, especially if they are older; historical. Because the meanings of terms can drift over time, so too can the meanings that inform experiments and theory. As can a life’s body of work and its contributions. Surely, these are also the meanings of a name; shortcuts to descriptions of the author who produced them, or of their thought (or maybe their collaborations). We are then led to wonder whether the names of scientists may also mean different things in different languages. Or even in the same language. This problem is examined here by leveraging the insights of historians of psychology who found that the meaning of “Wundt” changed in translation: his experimentalism was retained, and his Völkerpsychologie lost, so that what Wundt meant was altered even as his work—and his name—informed the disciplining of Modern Psychology as an experimental science. Those insights are then turned here into a general argument, regarding meaning-change in translation, but using a quantitative examination of the translations of Piaget’s books from French into English and German. It is therefore Piaget who has the focus here, evidentially, but the goal is broader: understanding and theorizing “the mistaken mirror” that reflects only what you can think to see (with implications for replication and institutional memory).

名字在翻译中是什么意思？奎因认为gavagai的意思是不确定的，直到你学会了使用这个词来指代它的对象的语言。科学文本的情况与此类似，尤其是在它们较旧的情况下；历史的。因为术语的含义会随着时间的推移而变化，所以为实验和理论提供信息的含义也会发生变化。就像一生的工作及其贡献一样。当然，这些也是名字的含义。描述制作它们的作者或他们的想法（或者可能是他们的合作）的捷径。然后我们会怀疑科学家的名字是否在不同的语言中也可能意味着不同的东西。甚至是同一种语言。这个问题在这里通过利用心理学历史学家的见解来检验，他们发现“冯特”的含义在翻译中发生了变化：他的实验主义被保留了，他的Völkerpsychologie丢失了，所以冯特的意思甚至在他的作品——以及他的名字——告知现代心理学作为一门实验科学的学科时，它也被改变了。然后，这些见解在这里变成了一般性论点，关于翻译中的意义变化，但使用了对皮亚杰著作从法语到英语和德语的翻译的定量检验。因此，显然，这里的重点是皮亚杰，但目标更广泛：理解和理论化“错误的镜子”，它只反映你能想到的东西（对复制和机构记忆有影响）。