: Re: If I unnofficially create a theory and use it in my story, will it have any validity that I'm the author of such theory? I have some theories that I've contrived, some are philosophical, others

@Kevin153

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There's not really any official process one can go through to assert ownership of a concept; all you can do is express it as memorably and as well as you can, so that people will be more likely to associate it with you. As Delany, paraphrasing Emily Dickinson, once wrote, "nothing survives except fine execution". Plenty of people have good, even brilliant ideas, but if they aren't well expressed, no one notices or cares.

As someone who both reads and writes philosophically, I've experienced this from both sides. I've seen my own theories paraphrased without attribution, out in the world. When I've followed up, however, people have generally been very gracious about correcting this. I also have plenty of theories bouncing around in my brain that I know aren't original, and some of them are easier to track down than others. The above Delany/Dickinson quote, for instance, is a strong concept, but I was only able to re-locate it because of how distinctively it was expressed.

As far as putting theories in fiction, that's a common way to disseminate ideas (especially if they're in a form that might not meet academic philosophical peer review standards). Philosophers from Plato to Sartre have dramatized their concepts, and writers from Dostoevsky to Walker Percy have used philosophical concepts as the foundation of their novels.

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