Scientific discovery is a process by which scientists generate new ideas and test their validity. It is often associated with the development of a new theory or concept, but can also include other types of scientific inquiry, such as the verification of existing theories and the exploration of natural phenomena. Scientific discovery is a crucial part of the knowledge-building enterprise, and the history of science provides many examples of discoveries in diverse fields.
Early modern accounts of scientific discovery captured knowledge-seeking practices in a broad range of disciplines, from astronomy and physics to medicine, chemistry and agriculture. These accounts were notable for separating the creative act of having a happy thought (or eureka moment) from processes of articulating and developing that thought, and the question of whether or not rules could be developed to guide those processes.
William Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of 1840 was a milestone in this separation, and he distinguished three elements of discovery: the “happy thought,” the articulation and development of that thought, and its testing or verification.
Other approaches to the methodology of discovery make the same distinction as Whewell, and argue that scientific creativity is a legitimate subject for philosophical analysis. These approaches have been criticized for blurring the boundary between the contexts of discovery and that of justification, but they do provide an alternative to the Kuhnian solution, by recognizing that the generative justificatory function of a new idea takes place at the very point when the hypothesis is devised.
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