The "Folk Theorem" on Effective Field Theory: A Case for Nuclear Physics

Although largely unrecognized, Gerry Brown had played a seminal and prescient role for the development of the currently heralded "first-principles approach" to nuclear dynamics known as "nuclear effective field theory" ($n$EFT for short). I give a brief account in what way he entered -- together with his Korean colleagues -- at the earliest stage of its development and what he left behind for the future in paving the road to go {\it way beyond} the standard $n$EFT. I do this in the context of Gerry's original conceptual ideas conceived after the "dilepton fiasco" that indicate a surprising new role of hidden local and scale symmetries in nuclear physics.