Abraham Kaplan

Abraham Kaplan (1918-1993) is best known for being the first philosopher to examine the behavioral sciences in his book "The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science." In this book, he talked about the Law of the Instrument expounded as: "Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."

This was the first ever recorded mention of the concept, which describes a tendency to rely on what is familiar. The concept is also sometimes referred to as Maslow's Hammer, after Abraham Maslow, who rephrased the saying as "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."