Looking a little further into the article, I see it mentions a whig history of science that ignores failed theories and dead ends, and I would agree that this is not the same as attributing successful theories to people who probably did not hold them, though the latter does also tend to present science in 'march of progress' terms.
The idea that the Galileo in being the first to formalise an equation for precise calculation of acceleration was by extension the first in history to conceptualise that acceleration occurs at all is a severe infantalisation of all scientists who preceded him.
Extending this: the Whig story on contemporary science (sp. as it affects policy) is that this is the best science because scientists have been improving it forever, while the conservative story is that maybe the scientists are wrong now, they’ve so often been wrong in the past.
states it more clearly
"... a characteristic of that kind of historical writing in which the author seeks antecedents of present-day institutions or ideas in earlier historical periods. This kind of anachronism is considered to be a form of Whig history ..."
I don't think that's quite what Whig history is. The Wikipedia article doesn't seem to imply that, either. If there was a "Tory history", I think this case would be more like that, as it presents a past figure as being more enlightened (while Whig history typically does the opposite in order to extol progress).