Obliteration by Incorporation

Introduced by sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1968 enlarged edition of his landmark work Social Theory and Social Structure. Merton described how foundational ideas become so universally accepted that they enter common knowledge without citation, causing their source and creator to be forgotten ("obliterated") as the concept is "incorporated" into standard practice. The concept explains why citation counts decline for seminal work not because it's forgotten, but because it's become fundamental background knowledge.