<P> In February 1962, Abraham Kaplan, then a Professor of Philosophy, gave a banquet speech at a conference of the American Educational Research Association that was being held at UCLA . An article in the June 1962 issue of the Journal of Medical Education stated that "the highlight of the 3 - day meeting...was to be found in Kaplan's comment on the choice of methods for research . He urged that scientists exercise good judgment in the selection of appropriate methods for their research . Because certain methods happen to be handy, or a given individual has been trained to use a specific method, is no assurance that the method is appropriate for all problems . He cited Kaplan's Law of the Instrument:' Give a boy a hammer and everything he meets has to be pounded ."' </P> <P> In The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (1964), Kaplan again mentioned the law of the instrument saying, "It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled ." And in a 1964 article for The Library Quarterly, he again cited the law and commented: "We tend to formulate our problems in such a way as to make it seem that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand ." </P> <P> In a 1963 essay collection, Computer Simulation of Personality: Frontier of Psychological Theory, Silvan Tomkins wrote about "the tendency of jobs to be adapted to tools, rather than adapting tools to jobs". He wrote: "If one has a hammer one tends to look for nails, and if one has a computer with a storage capacity, but no feelings, one is more likely to concern oneself with remembering and with problem solving than with loving and hating ." In the same book, Kenneth Mark Colby explicitly cited the law, writing: "The First Law of the Instrument states that if you give a boy a hammer, he suddenly finds that everything needs pounding . The computer program may be our current hammer, but it must be tried . One cannot decide from purely armchair considerations whether or not it will be of any value ." </P> <P> Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and variants thereof, is from Abraham Maslow's The Psychology of Science, published in 1966 . Abraham Maslow wrote: "I remember seeing an elaborate and complicated automatic washing machine for automobiles that did a beautiful job of washing them . But it could do only that, and everything else that got into its clutches was treated as if it were an automobile to be washed . I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail ." </P>

If you see every problem as a nail