Abstract

We begin with some questions. What constitutes a scientific discovery? How do we tell when a discovery has been made and whom to credit? Is making a discovery (always) the same as solving a problem? Is it an individual psychological event (an ahal experience), or something more articulated such as a logical argument or a mathematical derivation? May discovery require a long, intricate social process? Could it be an experimental demonstration? How do we tell exactly what has been discovered, given that old discoveries are often recharacterized in very different ways by succeeding generations? What kinds of items can be discovered, and how? Is the discovery of a theory accomplished in much the same way as the discovery of a new comet, or is “discovery” an inhomogeneous domain of items or activities calling for quite diverse accounts? Must a discovery be both new and true? How is discovery related to (other?) forms of innovation, such as invention and social construction? Can there be a logic or method of discovery? Just one? Many? What could such a procedure be? How is it possible that an (a priori?) logic or method available now has so much future knowledge already packed into it? How could a logic of discovery itself be discovered? How general in scope must a method of discovery be? Must it apply to all sciences, independently of the subject matter (as we might expect of a “logic”), or might it apply only to problems of a certain type or depend on substantive scientific claims? How, if at all, is their discovery related to the justification of scientific claims? Is the manner in which scientists make discoveries at all similar to the way in which they test them? Is this justificatory “checkout” procedure really part of the larger discovery process rather than distinct from it? Can discoveries be explained rationally, or do they always contain irrational or nonrational elements, such as inspiration or blind luck? Are historians, sociologists, and psychologists better equipped than philosophers to explain scientific creativity? Can a methodology of discovery help to explain the explosion of scientific and technological progress since 1600? If there is no logic of discovery, and if discovery is irrelevant to justification, then why include the subject of discovery in the domain of philosophy (epistemology or methodology of science) at all? What could philosophers have to say about it? Are there historical patterns of discovery, for example, that tell us something about the rationality, if not the logic (in the strict sense), of the growth of scientific knowledge?