The scientific reasoning strategies used to discover a new concept in a scientific domain were investigated in two studies. An innovative task in which subjects discover new concepts in molecular biology was used. This task was based upon one set of experiments that Jacob and Monod used to discover how genes are controlled, and for which they were awarded the Nobel prize. In the two studies reported in this article, subjects were taught some basic facts and experimental techniques in (...) molecular biology, using a simulated molecular genetics laboratory on a computer. Following their initial training, they were then asked to discover how genes are controlled by other genes. In Study 1, subjects found no evidence that was consistent with their initial hypothesis. Subjects then set one of two goals for conducting experiments and evaluating data. One goal was to search for evidence consistent with the current hypothesis (and they did not attend to the features of discrepant findings); none of the subjects who only had this goal succeeded at discovering how the genes were controlled. Other subjects in Study 1 used a different goal: Upon noticing evidence inconsistent with their current hypothesis, these subjects set a new goal of attempting to explain the cause of the discrepant findings. Using this goal, a subset of these subjects discovered the correct solution to the problem. Study 2 was conducted to test the hypothesis that subjects' goals of finding evidence consistent with their current hypothesis blocks consideration of alternate hypotheses and generation of new goals, it was predicted that if subjects could achieve their initial goal of discovering evidence consistent with their current hypothesis, they would then attend to particular features of discrepant evidence and solve the problem. To test this prediction, an additional mechanism of genetic control that was consistent with subjects' initial goal was added to the genes. Here, subjects had to discover two mechanisms of control: one mechanism consistent with their current hypothesis, and one inconsistent with their hypothesis. Twice as many subjects reached the correct solution in Study 2 than in Study 1. The findings of the two studies indicate that goals provide a powerful constraint on the cognitive processes underlying scientific reasoning and that the types of goals that are represented determine many of the reasoning errors that subjects make. (shrink)

Given a set of objects characterized by a number of attributes, hidden patterns can be discovered in them for the grouping of similar objects into clusters. If each of these clusters can be considered as exemplifying a certain concept, then the problem concerned can be referred to as a concept discovery problem. This concept discovery problem can be solved to some extent by existing data clustering techniques. However, they may not be applicable when the (...) class='Hi'>concept involved is vague in nature or when the attributes characterizing the objects can be qualitative, quantitative, and fuzzy at the same time. To discover such concepts from objects with such characteristics, we propose a Genetic-Algorithm-based technique. By encoding a specific object grouping in a chromosome and a fitness measure to evaluate the cluster quality, the proposed technique is able to discover meaningful fuzzy clusters and assign membership degrees to objects that do not fully exemplify a certain concept. For evaluation, we tested the proposed technique with simulated and real data and the results are found to be very promising. (shrink)

The paper aims to show how by elaborating the Peircean terms used in the title creativity in learning processes and in scientific discoveries can be explained within a semiotic framework. The essential idea is to emphasize both the role of external representations and of experimenting with those representations , and to describe a process consisting of three steps: First, looking at diagrams "from a novel point of view" offers opportunities to synthesize elements of these diagrams which have never been perceived (...) as connected before. Second, by forming those observed syntheses to "new objects" of thinking, and by signifying these objects through new signs , new means of thinking and acting are created . And finally, by applying these new means – in proofs, for instance – the "intelligibility" of new discoveries and their power to explain problematic facts must be tested. (shrink)

The general question considered is whether and to what extent there are features of our mathematical knowledge that support a realist attitude towards mathematics. I consider, in particular, reasoning from claims such as that mathematicians believe their reasoning to be part of a process of discovery (and not of mere invention), to the view that mathematical entities exist in some mind-independent way although our minds have epistemic access to them.

Human and machine discovery are gradual problem-solving processes of searching large problem spaces for incompletely defined goal objects. Research on problem solving has usually focused on search of an instance space (empirical exploration) and a hypothesis space (generation of theories). In scientific discovery, search must often extend to other spaces as well: spaces of possible problems, of new or improved scientific instruments, of new problem representations, of new concepts, and others. This paper focuses especially on the processes for (...) finding new problem representations and new concepts, which are relatively new domains for research on discovery.Scientific discovery has usually been studied as an activity of individual investigators, but these individuals are positioned in a larger social structure of science, being linked by the blackboard of open publication (as well as by direct collaboration). Even while an investigator is working alone, the process is strongly influenced by knowledge and skills stored in memory as a result of previous social interaction. In this sense, all research on discovery, including the investigations on individual processes discussed in this paper, is social psychology, or even sociology. (shrink)

The aim of this interdisciplinary study is to reconstruct the evolution of our changing conceptions of time in the light of scientific discoveries. It will adopt a new perspective and organize the material around three central themes, which run through our history of time reckoning: cosmology and regularity; stasis and flux; symmetry and asymmetry. It is the physical criteria that humans choose – relativistic effects and time-symmetric equations or dynamic-kinematic effects and asymmetric conditions – that establish our views on the (...) nature of time. This book will defend a dynamic rather than a static view of time. (shrink)

Considering the case of Juan de Vilanova y Piera, often celebrated as the first scientist to accept the prehistoric antiquity of palaeolithic paintings, we explore some of the problems related to the concept of ‘precursor’ in the field of the history of science. In the first section, we propose a brief history of this notion focusing on those authors who have reflected critically on the meaning of predecessors. In the second section, the example of Vilanova illustrates the ways in (...) which historians of science have created precursors. From the vantage of modern science, precursors have traditionally been defined as those who first indicated or announced ideas or theories later accepted by the scientific community. As a result, they have been represented as ‘heroes’ struggling hard to defeat the ignorance of their time. As the case of Juan de Vilanova illustrates, this traditional view is unsatisfactory in many ways. For this reason we consider in the third section a number of methodological strategies to promote a more adequate approach to pioneers. In particular, we suggest that the best way to surmount hagiographical approaches to past scientists is to put them in their own intellectual and historical contexts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Originality of Descartes’s Conception of Analysis as DiscoveryBenoît TimmermansAccording to Descartes, his Meditations employ the method of analysis. This method of proof, says Descartes, “shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered methodically and as it were a priori.” 1 Such a definition of analysis poses a problem that seems to have attracted little attention among commentators until now, namely, why Descartes (...) considers analysis a method of discovery whereas the Scholastic tradition asserts just the contrary, that synthesis allows the discovery of new things, whereas analysis is a method for judging findings or verifying them a posteriori. What is more, the definition that Descartes gives of his analysis contains another divergence, this time brought up by the commentators, 2 for he curiously considers analysis an a priori movement and not an a posteriori movement as dictated by tradition.These issues are all the more important as the analytical method acquired particular prestige in the seventeenth century. This prestige concerned not only philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, etc.) but science as well. Thus algebra lost some of its rough edges and gradually took on the name of “analysis.” 3 Descartes created a type of geometry that was soon dubbed “analytic,” and Leibniz developed his analysis infinitorum or differential and integral calculus. If the scientific revolution and the new philosophies that were associated with it attached so much importance to a method that had already been known in ancient Greece, was it not due to a change of the meaning of analysis or at least a rearranging of some of its functions? This is the question that we propose to [End Page 433] tackle while trying to determine to what extent Cartesian analysis breaks with the forms of analysis that preceded it. 4To do this we shall first examine the teachings of Scholastic philosophy concerning the connections between analysis and discovery in general and then study the logical possibilities of discovery through analysis that draw their inspiration from Aristotle’s Analytics and that were developed extensively by the School of Padua in the sixteenth century. Finally, we shall attempt to determine whether the mathematical definition of analysis derived from the works of Euclid and Pappus gives grounds for the correlation with discovery.The Link Between Analysis and Discovery According to the ScholasticsOne might well think that Descartes was completely unaware of the contradiction between his definition of analysis and the teachings of the Scholastics. Had not he always exhibited a true disdain for the latter? However, in September 1640, that is, four months before writing his text on analysis, Descartes began girding for the Jesuit Fathers’ objections to his Meditations. This involved looking for an “abstract of the whole of scholastic philosophy, this would save the time it would take to read their huge tomes.” 5 He finally found what he was looking for in the shops of Leiden, namely, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo’s Summa Philosophiae. There is reason to believe that Descartes read this opus with interest, for two months later he referred to it as “the best book of its kind ever made.” 6 Later he said that he would definitely have chosen the Summa Philosophiae as the basis for refuting the School’s doctrine if he had not given up such a project. 7 Now, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo’s Summa Philosophiae is categorical on the subject of analysis versus synthesis. Analysis of a definition “is perfectly compatible with the doctrines for teaching and learning; as for the other disciplines of discovery, the other method, that is the composite or synthetic method, must be used.” 8According to the Scholastic doctrine as stated by Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, analysis thus plays a part in the teaching of well-known things and in all processes of appraisal, assessment, or judgment. This is easy to explain if one considers that, etymologically, analysis breaks links (ana-luein), goes backward, or climbs back up from the consequences to the principles. Starting from an observation, proposition, or question, it wends its way back to the simplest, [End Page 434] surest items of knowledge that shed light on and verify said starting... (shrink)

Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle. The author's argument consists (...) of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement. Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas. (shrink)

Rosamond Rhodes makes a persuasive case for the view that medical ethics does not derive from common morality.1 Rhodes identifies the challenge that immediately arises and its corollary: Whence the origin of medical ethics? And, should we understand medical ethics as autonomous? From the perspective of professional ethics in medicine, the first question can now be restated: Whence the origin of the ethical concept of medicine as a profession, the basis of the ethical obligations of physicians in patient care, (...) research, medical education, and in advocacy and healthcare policy? The history of Western philosophy offers us two pathways to address this question. The first is the quest for certainty,2 a quest fulfilled by using methods designed to discover concepts that are independent of human thought and judgement and thus intellectually and morally authoritative for everyone. Such concepts are timeless and therefore transcultural, transreligious and transnational. Examples include Plato’s Forms,3 PF Stawson’s (1919–2006) ‘our conceptual structure’,4 Edmund Pellegrino’s (1920–2003) ‘fact of illness’ and the ‘act of profession’ in response to the vulnerability that illness creates,5 and common morality.6 Thought experiments, using what Rhodes characterises as ‘the hypethetico-deductive method’,1 aim to discover timeless concepts. Discovering timeless concepts must address their ontological and epistemological status. Plato’s ontology of Forms,2 for example, is not clear, as …. (shrink)

How do scientific models represent in a way that enables us to discover new truths about reality and draw inferences about it? Contemporary accounts of scientific discovery answer this question by focusing on the cognitive mechanisms involved in the generation of new ideas and concepts in terms of a special sort of reasoning—or model-based reasoning—involving imagery. Alternatively, I argue that answering this question requires that we recognise the crucial role of the propositional imagination in the construction and development of (...) models for the purpose of generating hypotheses that are plausible candidates for truth. I propose simple fictionalism as a new account of models as Waltonian games of make-believe and suggest that models can lead to genuine scientific discovery when they are used as representations that denote real world phenomena and generate two main kinds of theoretical hypotheses, model-world comparisons and direct attributions. (shrink)

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled. Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate (...) the human thought processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along. "Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science. Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University. (shrink)

Popper’s view of scientific activity appears to take its social and communitarian features largely for granted. Rather than making this inter-subjectivity the basic problematic in his work, he wanted to move beyond language without, however, foreclosing the possibility that communication may often be a source of confusion in research and related scientific activity. Popper feared that the study of science, no less than scientific activity itself, may be led astray by an overly reflexive approach and focus. There are aspects of (...) his views on this matter which bear a considerable resemblance to Bacon, even though Popper is clearly a Cartesian deductivist rather than a Baconian inductivist, for reasons that become apparent in The Logic of Scientific Discovery. According to Popper, no such practice or method of discovery exists, either in science or anywhere else. (shrink)

Molecular chaperones assist de novo protein folding and facilitate the refolding of stress‐denatured proteins. The molecular chaperone concept was coined nearly 35 years ago, and since then, tremendous strides have been made in understanding how these factors support protein folding. Here, we focus on how various chaperone proteins were first identified to play roles in protein folding. Examples are used to illustrate traditional routes of chaperone discovery and point out their advantages and limitations. Recent advances, including the development (...) of folding biosensors and promising methods for the stabilization of proteins in vivo, provide new routes for chaperone discovery. (shrink)

THE CONCEPTS OF ASYMMETRY and optical activity, although introduced fairly late into inorganic chemistry, have played venerable and central roles in organic chemistry. Modern organic chemistry is usually considered to commence with Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea in 1828, and Jean Baptiste Biot's discovery of optical activity in 1812 antedates the very genesis of this field. Moreover, Joseph Achille Le Bel and Jacobus Henricusvan't Hoff's concept of the tetrahedral carbon atom, which constitutes the foundation of stereochemistry, was proposed (...) a century ago (1874), primarily in order to explain the optical isomerism investigated by Louis Pasteur and others. It is to Alfred Werner, the founder of coordination chemistry, however, that we owe the introduction of the concept of optical activity into coordination chemistry, together with its experimental proof. ' The purpose of this paper is to examine and speculate upon the circumstances of Werner's discovery of optically active coordination compounds, to trace its antecedents in earlier work, and to assess its impact upon the future course of inorganic stereochemistry. (shrink)

Scientific discovery is an important moment in scientific pursuit, but only a few philosophers of science appreciate this moment as a logical issue. Starting from his understanding that all thought contains components of which we are subsidiarily aware in focal content of thinking, Michael Polanyi puts out his thesis that scientific discovery cannot be justified by a series of strictly explicit operations but by merely invoking deeper forms of commitment in sighting the problem and the vision of reality. (...) This article will delve into Polanyi’s notion of scientific discovery in three sections: the first section is dealing with Polanyi’s concept of heuristic philosophy which tones that discovery of problem is the primary requisite of a good scientist to vision reality, the second discusses the role of intellectual passions in scientific justification, and the third focuses on the ontological implication of scientific discovery that it guides us to comprehension of something real both tangible and intangible. The article concludes that since scientific discovery involves the creative and imaginative appeal to reality, its rationality must be counted on by its logical structure and personal experiences in scientific community. (shrink)

In distinguishing justification from discovery, the logical empiricists hoped to avoid confusing causal matters with normative ones. Exaggerating the virtue of this distinction, however, has disguised from us important features of the concept of a reason as it functions in human practice. Surfacing those features gives some insight into reasoning and argument.

This article opens with general and historical remarks on philosophy of science's problems with the concept of discovery. Then, drawing upon simple examples of Watson's and Crick's non-philosophical usage, I characterize phrases of the type "x discovers y" semantically. It will subsequently be shown how widespread philosophical discussion on discovery violates the semantic constraints of phrases of the type "x discovers y." Then I provide a philosophical reconstruction of "x discovers y" that is in keeping with the (...) "folk" notion of discovery. The philosophical ingredients of this approach are taken from a certain aspect of action theory and from epistemological reliabilism. The approach draws upon the concept of superior action and connects this concept to progressive research. In contrast to normal actions, superior actions are primarily explained by competencies. This perspective includes reminders of what some nineteenth-century philosopher-scientists had advocated as a competence-oriented view on scientific research. Finally, this approach is applied to the case of Watson's and Crick's discovery. (shrink)

The question of how concepts are formed was central for positivist and operationalist philosophers concerned to root scientific thought directly in experience. Although the positivist program has been abandoned, the current interest in the philosophy of scientific discovery shows the need for a theory of conceptual development. This paper offers a theory of how new concepts can arise, not by abstraction from experience or by definition, but by conceptual combination. Such combination produces a new concept as a non-linear, (...) non-definitional amalgam of existing concepts. After proposing rules intended to account for a variety of mundane cases of conceptual combination, the paper presents several illustrations of how scientific concepts have arisen through combination. (shrink)

The discovery-justification distinction stands as a pivotal issue within 20th-century philosophy of science. It subtly underpins many foundational topics and concepts pertinent to our comprehension of knowledge. Thomas Kuhn's contributions are indispensable in this regard, with his critiques playing a pivotal role in shaping both his initial model of scientific progress and its subsequent revisions. Kuhn addressed this dichotomy head-on in the first of his Thalheimer Lectures, presented in 1984. In this paper, we revisit Pablo Melogno's (2019) examination of (...) Kuhn's engagement with this theme. Concurring with Melogno, our analysis extends his interpretation by exploring Larry Laudan's objections to certain research programs focused on a logic of discovery. We further scrutinize specific assumptions about discovery heuristics that have been misinterpreted within Laudan's methodological framework, particularly the one stemming from Herbert Simon's pioneering work. By synthesizing these perspectives, we aim to set up a preliminary framework for a more refined understanding of how history and philosophy of science inform the epistemic practices of agents operating with bounded rationality. (shrink)

John Granville's first book is unique on several counts. First, it's not simply a history of science, but rather a history of our evolving unerstanding of motion. It's unique in the detailed explanations given to common scientific riddles-explanations aimed to help students avoid catastrophic collisions with these concepts in college. It's unique in that it resents the philosophies on which the major scientific paradigm shifts rest. It's unique in its presentation from Thomas Kuhn's point of view (i.e., his concept (...) of world view and paradigm shifts as presented in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). The book begins with an informal discussion of Kuhn's notion of world view, and various concepts relevant to his thesis concerning the nature of scientific revolutions; but, the Discovery of Motion proper begins with ancient Egyptian and Greek preparations for Aristotle (here the dialectic of Parmenides and Plato are given special attention). A survey of Aristotle and his science of motion follows (i.e., his theory of nature and natural philosophy). Included in this part of the book are the works of such notables as Archimedes and Ptolemy. The Copernican revolution, including the works of Galileo, Kepler and Newton is, of course, presented from the viewpoint of Kuhn's paradigm shift. Four chapters concerning Newtonian motion are the highlight of the first half of the book. It is here Granville's original aim, of explaning puzzling scientific phenomena to young students, is realized-but now this material serves another purpose. These chapters not only clarify Newton's world view but expose phenomena that were virtually invisible to the peripatetics...and will eventually expose reasons for the ambivalence and frustration that accompany scientific revolutions. Granville then turns to philosophical developments that led to our modern view of the world. This part of the book covers the evolution of empiricism from Bacon to Hume (with Descartes' rationalism thrown in for contrast). Kant's epistemology concludes this philosophical survey, deliberately leading the plot back toward the classical viewpoint. Finally, developments of the nineteenth century that led to the so-called Second Scientific Revolution are considered. The final chapter is a unique presentation of Einstein's relativity theory, where the incompatibility of this theory with Newtonian physics, and the reason why relativity must take precedence, are discussed. Granville compares the opposition to the Copernican revolution with twentieth century opposition to the Einsteinian revolution. The book reveals that, after building detailed understanding of classical Newtonian phenomena, opposition to a shift of world view is an understandable human reaction. (shrink)

An inference to a new explanation may be both logically non-ampliative and epistemically ampliative. Included among the premises of the latter form is the explanadum--a unique premise which is capable of embodying what we do not know about the matter in question, as well as legitimate aspects of what we do know. This double status points to a resolution of the Meno paradox. Ampliative inference of this sort, it is argued, has much in common with Nickles' idea of discoverability and, (...) together with the mapping and correction procedures (briefly summarized) required for such inference, may suggest a broadening of the concept of justification which would incorporate much of what has been defended in theories of discovery. (shrink)

Colin Morris traces the origin of the concept of the individual, not to the Renaissance where it is popularly assumed to have been invented, but farther back, ...

In recent years, the full text of papers are increasingly available electronically which opens up the possibility of quantitatively investigating citation contexts in more detail. In this study, we introduce a new form of citation analysis, which we call citation concept analysis (CCA). CCA is intended to reveal the cognitive impact certain concepts—published in a highly-cited landmark publication—have on the citing authors. It counts the number of times the concepts are mentioned (cited) in the citation context of citing publications. (...) We demonstrate the method using three classical highly cited books: (1) The structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, (2) The logic of scientific discovery—Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft in German—, and (3) Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge by Karl R. Popper. It is not surprising—as our results show—that Kuhn’s “paradigm” concept seems to have had a significant impact. What is surprising is that our results indicate a much larger impact of the concept “paradigm” than Kuhn’s other concepts, e.g., “scientific revolution”. The paradigm concept accounts for about 40% of the concept-related citations to Kuhn’s work, and its impact is resilient across all disciplines and over time. With respect to Popper, “falsification” is the most used concept derived from his books. Falsification is the cornerstone of Popper’s critical rationalism. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant develops a metametaphysical view concerning the domain and source of a distinctively metaphysical cognition of objects of experience, which is given in terms of an analysis of our representational capacity for thought, namely, the understanding, regarding its sub-capacities and their constitutive abilities and acts. In the Analytic of Concepts, more precisely, in the Metaphysical and Subjective Deductions of the Categories, Kant develops an elaborate account of the content and formation of those metaphysical concepts (...) of an object in general through which there is genuine philosophical cognition of objects of experience, namely, the categories. Relating the Analytic of Concepts to the Doctrine of Method, I give a detailed reconstruction of this account in contrast to both empirical and mathematical concepts. I do so by establishing, for the first time (in English) that and how the representational contents of the categories, as general representations of objects, derive from fundamental abilities and acts of a synthesis of an empirical intuition that the understanding contributes to experiences of objects, which thus yield the original contents of the categories. In particular, I argue that the threefold synthesis of the fundamental act-types of the apprehension, reproduction, and recognition of a manifold of sense-impressions, presented in the A-Deduction, holds the key to understanding the origin of the categories, or concepts of an object in general, investigated in their Metaphysical Deduction. It turns out that the threefold synthesis, as it is exercised regarding a manifold of sense-impressions in an empirical intuition of an object, can indeed account for the representational contents of the categories of Quality (apprehension), Quantity (reproduction), Relation (recognition), and Modality (relating to the object through a manifold of sense-impressions). In this sense, the categories are “concepts of synthesis” (A80/B106) or “concepts of the synthesis of possible sensations” (A723/B751). (shrink)

The distinction between the context ofdiscovery and the context of justificationrestricts philosophy of science to the rationalreconstruction of theories, and characterizesscientific discovery as rare, theoreticalupheavals that defy rational reconstruction. Kuhnian challenges to the two contextsdistinction show that non-rational elementspersist in the justification of theories, butgo no further to provide a positive account ofdiscovery. A gradualist theory of discoverydeveloped in this paper shows, with supportfrom ecological cases, that discoveries areroutinely made in ecology by extending modelsto new domains, or by making (...) additions toearlier models. The logic of discovery isphilosophically accessible once it isappreciated that model truth is presumed, evenif counterfactually, in ecologists' applicationof models. A gradualist view shows thatmodels' heuristic power routinely leads todiscoveries. (shrink)

New computer systems of discovery create a research program for logic and philosophy of science. These systems consist of inference rules and control knowledge that guide the discovery process. Their paths of discovery are influenced by the available data and the discovery steps coincide with the justification of results. The discovery process can be described in terms of fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence such as heuristic search, and can also be interpreted in terms of logic. (...) The traditional distinction that places studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery. It becomes both reasonable and attractive to study the schemes of discovery in the same way as the criteria of justification were studied: empirically as facts, and logically as norms. (shrink)

The ArgumentScientific tools—measurement and calculation instruments, techniques of inference—straddle the line between the context of discovery and the context of justification. In discovery, new scientific tools suggest new theoretical metaphors and concepts; and in justification, these tool-derived theoretical metaphors and concepts are morelikely to be accepted by the scientific community if the tools are already entrenched in scientific practice.Techniques of statistical inference and hypothesis testing entered American psychology first as tools in the 1940s and 1950s and then as (...) cognitive theories in the 1960s and 1970s. Not only did psychologists resists statistical metaphors of mind prior to the institutionalization of inference techniques in their own practice; the cognitive theories they ultimately developed about “the mind as intuitive statistician” still bear the telltale marks of the practical laboratory context in which the tool was used. (shrink)

Tematyka pracy sytuuje się na pograniczu teorii psychologii i teorii języka. Celem jej jest pokazanie niespójności i niewspółmierności dwóch stylów myślenia o człowieku - kartezjańskiego i postfreudowskiego. Świadomość, tożsamość indywidualna, wolna wola, odpowiedzialność, intencjonalność, myśl - tworzą jeden zespół pojęć powiązanych ze sobą, a charakteryzujący kartezjanizm. Natomiast nieświadomość, automatyzm, determinizm, rekurencyjność - stanowią pojęciowy oręż freudyzmu. Nieświadomość jest w tej konwencji stanem pośredniczącym między mną a drugim. Autor twierdzi, że teksty Z. Freuda są dla współczesnych takimi samymi „narzędziami" inspiracji, jakim (...) niegdyś dla nowożytnych były teksty R. Descartes'a. Książka ma charakter rekonstrukcyjny, a działanie jej autora to w znacznej mierze praca detektywa, polega bowiem na wyśledzeniu i odkryciu inspiracji oraz korekt lub uściśleń, jakie współcześni myśliciele próbują odkryciu Freuda narzucić. Książka ma na celu wskazanie problemów filozoficznych w ramach empirystycznie zorientowanej dziś psychologii. Po pierwsze, autor stara się wykazać, że psychologia wraz ze swym klasycznym problemem ciała i umysłu jest produktem nowożytnym, tj. rodzi się wraz z tekstami Kartezjusza. Po drugie, autor krytycznie odnosi się do dwóch istotnych rozwinięć kartezjanizmu, tj. introspekcjonizmu i fenomenologii. Te¬mu pierwszemu zarzuca sprzeczność pomiędzy założeniami ontologicznymi (dyrektywa paralelizmu psychofizycznego) a praktyką badawczą (naturalizm epistemologiczny i fenomenalizm), fenomenologii zaś niekonsekwencję w ujęciu problemu świadomości. Łącząc te dwie krytyki autor stara się zburzyć zaufanie do równania: „psychiczne = świadome". Świadomość, że psychologia powinna odszukać inny od świadomości przedmiot badań, stanowi przesłankę główną poszukiwań intelektualnych zawartych w książce. Autor zwraca się w kierunku myślenia antykartezjańskiego, tj. psychoanalizy i kognitywistyki. Z tekstów S. Freuda autor stara się wyłuskać spójną teorię aparatu psychicznego. Tu jednak natrafia na pęknięcie, na pewną dwuznaczność; ów aparat można bowiem interpretować dwojako: albo jako system reprezentacji, albo jako maszynę. (shrink)

While the study of Newton's religious views has been continuously expanding, it has not been brought to bear directly on Newton's career as an ‘experimental philosopher’. Historical perspectives on his optical experiments in particular affirm the historiographic separation between the religious and scientific aspects of his work. In this paper I examine the practical implication of Newton's theology of dominion on his early experiments on light and colours. While his predecessors had made experiments to collect evidence, I show that Newton (...) conceived experimental research as a discipline of the practical understanding of the structure of light and the origins of colours. His conception of experimental reasoning followed his practical reflections on human beings as agents who belonged to God's dominion and who were created to serve its divine ends. These reflections suggested, more specifically, that the aim of natural philosophy was the discovery of divine rules that instrumentally constrained and facilitated human conduct in general, and perceptual judgement in particular. I show, moreover, that Newton's endeavour to subordinate experiment to divine worship had been foreshadowed by Boyle's writing on the theory and practice of the experimental philosophy. (shrink)

An important fact about human labor is that it can result not just in reproduction of what it started with, but in something new, a surplus product. When the latter is a means of production, it makes possible a mechanism of change consisting of reproduction by means of the expanded means of production. Each iteration of the labor process can differ from the preceding one insofar as it incorporates the surplus generated previously. Over the long-term, this cyclical process can lead (...) to the self-transformation of labor and, through it, of human societies and cultures. In this paper, I argue that this mechanism of change is also at work in the history of science. I argue that the form this mechanism takes in science is that of a feedback loop between discovery and instrument construction. This process requires the integration, and transformation into material form, of different kinds of knowledge. Based on this mechanism, I defend a concept of scientific progress as transcendence of the limitations of native human epistemic abilities. I also criticize narrowly biologistic approaches to the history of science for ignoring the role of surplus generation in transforming the labor process, and discuss some problems associated with viewing science as labor. (shrink)

This article briefly replies to commentaries by Ilina Singh and Peter Lucas on our original piece titled "Mental Disorder and the Concept of Authenticity". In response to Lucas, we argue that those who face questions of authenticity in the context of mental disorder cannot avoid the dilemma between the "self-discovery" and "self-creation" approaches. In response to Singh, we suggest some ways in which the concept of authenticity might be of relevance to clinicians.

Philosophers have traditionally conceived of discovery in terms of internal cognitive acts. Close consideration of Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of the DNA double helix, however, reveals some problems with this traditional conception. This article argues that defining discovery in terms of mental operations entails problematic conclusions and excludes acts that should fall within the domain of discovery. It proposes that discovery be expanded to include external acts of making visible. Doing so allows for (...) a reevaluation of Franklin's role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. (shrink)

This paper provides an explication and defense of a view that many philosophers and biologists have accepted though few have understood, the idea that functional language can play an important role in biological discovery. I defend four theses in support of this view: (1) functional statements can serve as background assumptions that produce research problems; (2) functional questions can be important parts of research problems; (3) functional concepts can provide a framework for developing general theories; (4) functional statements can (...) serve as heuristics for generating hypotheses. I develop and defend these four claims by describing a taxonomy of functional discourse, providing an account of scientific discovery, and by applying this framework to some cases of successful research in biology. (shrink)

Originally published in 1963, The Concept of the Positron forms a detailed analysis of quantum theory. Whilst it is not as well known as Professor Hanson's previous book, Patterns of Discovery, the text has many interesting aspects. In many ways it goes further than Hanson's earlier work in approaching the problems of theory competition and the rationality of science, topics that have since become central to the philosophy of science. It is also notable for a rigorous and forthright (...) defence of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Taken together, the ideas presented in this book constitute a first-rate achievement in the history and philosophy of science. This paperback reissue comes with a new preface from Matthew Lund, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Rowan University. (shrink)

In contemporary American poetry, poets practice open form. Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Paul Blackburn, Robert Creeley, Jack Spicer, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Edward Dorn, Louis Zukofsky, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara belong to this school of open form. Their open form advocates creative spontaneity, fragmentation, and juxtaposition. It repudiates thematic and formal closure and requires of its readers a willingness to value a poem as process and event. Recent studies of open form inform us that in both theory (...) and practice they descended from Pound and Williams. However, my intention is to establish the foreground of open form in the poetics and poetry of Yeats, Pound, and Eliot. My major objective is to establish Yeats as the precursor of the poetics of open form, and then to apply his poetics to his poetry, and to those of Pound and Eliot. ;Part I, with the aid of the theories of language by Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Martin Heidegger, examines the linguistic turn revealed in Yeats's A Vision which manifests the poetics of open form through the rhetoric of prophecy. Chapter One defines the concept of the Unity of Being. Chapter Two illustrates how Yeats disciplines himself in his poetic quest for the Unity of Being. Chapter Three defines prophecy and the rhetoric of prophecy. Exergue, an inter-chapter, surveys and assesses contemporary theories of language in an attempt to relate metaphor to rhetoric. Chapter Four closely examines A Vision in the light of the rhetoric of prophecy and poetics of open form. ;Part II demonstrates how the poetry of Yeats, Pound and Eliot provides the praxis of Yeats's poetics. Conclusion discusses the poetics of Duncan, Olson, and Levertov and show how they reflect Yeats's, thereby demonstrating the continuity between the poetry of modernism and postmodernism. (shrink)

In his commentary on Euclid, Proclus develops what he takes to be an important Platonic critique of the epistemology of abstraction. As I argue, his argument closely reflects terminology and concepts from Plato’s Philebus. Both emphasize the priority—in reality and in our awareness—of the precise over the imprecise. Specifically, Proclus’s famous notion of the psychical “projection” of intermediate mathematical entities, while having no technically exact precedent in Plato, finds a conceptual neighbor in the Philebus’s suggestion that philosophical arithmeticians “posit” pure (...) units for counting. Likewise, for both our self-engagement in mathematical thinking serves to clarify the independence of the precise sciences—both in their content and in their practice—from perception. Thus, as I argue, Plato and Proclus, with their different terms and nuances, develop a shared conception scientific inquiry in which an activity of “creative discovery” plays a central role. (shrink)

Many investigations into the world, including philosophical ones, aim to discover causal knowledge, and many experimental methods have been developed to assist in causal discovery. More recently, algorithms have emerged that can also learn causal structure from purely or mostly observational data, as well as experimental data. These methods have started to be applied in various philosophical contexts, such as debates about our concepts of free will and determinism. This paper provides a “user's guide” to these methods, though not (...) in the sense of specifying exact button presses in a software package. Instead, we explain the larger “pipeline” within which these methods are used and discuss key steps in moving from initial research idea to validated causal structure. (shrink)

The rise of world literature is the most noticeable phenomenon in literary studies in the twenty-first century. However, truly well-known and globally circulating works are all canonical works of European or Western literature, while non-European and even "minor" European literatures remain largely unknown beyond their culture of origin. World Literature as Discovery: Expanding the World Literary Canon argues that world literature for our time must go beyond Eurocentrism and expand the canon to include great works from non-European and "minor" (...) European literatures. As much of the world's literature remains untranslated and unknown, the expansion will be an exciting process of discovery. By discussing fundamental questions around canon, circulation, aesthetic values, translation, cosmopolitanism and the literary universal, Zhang Longxi proposes a new and liberating concept of world literature that will shape world literature worthy of its name. This book speaks for a more inclusive idea of world literature, and shows students and scholars alike that all the literary traditions, particularly non-European traditions, will be able to make important contributions and expand the canon of world literature. (shrink)

Multiple simultaneous independent discoveries, so well enunciated by Robert K. Merton in the early 1960s but already discussed for several hundreds of years, is a classic concept in the sociology of science. In this paper, the concept of multiple simultaneous independent errors is proposed, analyzed, and discussed. The concept of Selective Pessimistic Induction is proposed and used to connect MIDs with MIEs. Five types of MIEs are discussed: multiple errors in the interpretation of experimental data or computational (...) results; multiple misjudgments of the value of another’s research results or conclusions; multiple cases of false anticipation of achieving a certain experimental result; multiples of ignoring or omitting relevant precedents; and multiple instances of failure due to a not-yet-conceived scientific concept or principle. Causal MIDs and MIEs are those that can be traced directly to antecedent knowledge. Acausal MIDs and MIEs are those involving a consequential and identifiable leap from antecedent knowledge. Examples of causal and acausal MIEs are provided, mostly but not exclusively from the discipline of chemistry. Comparisons are made between MIDs and MIEs. Topics for future research are discussed and implications of these concepts are proposed. (shrink)

This paper investigates a well-known case of simultaneous discovery in twentieth-century chemistry, the origins of the concept of hybridisation, in the light of Kuhn's insights. There has been no ambiguity as to who discovered this concept, when it was "rst in print, and how important it was. The full-#edged form of the concept was published in 1931 independently by two American scientists John C. Slater (1900}1976) and Linus Pauling (1901}1994), although both of them had made their (...) ideas public earlier: Slater at the American Physical Society meetings in 1930, and Pauling in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1928. Slater and Pauling both argued for the necessity of using an s orbital as well as three p orbitals in the carbon atom in order to explain carbon's four valences and the tetrahedral structure of methane. The metaphor &hybridisation' for denoting this mix of s and p orbitals was "rst used by Robert S. Mulliken and J. H. Van Vleck before gaining currency with the scienti"c community around 1935.2 The concept of hybridisation was indeed indispensable for extending the quantum-mechanical interpretation of the chemical bond as an electron pairing from diatomic molecules to polyatomic ones. To be sure, the emergence of hybridisation attests to scientists' growing interest in exploring the borderland between physics and chemistry, a trend that led to the creation of physical chemistry in the late nineteenth century and of chemical physics and quantum chemistry in the 1920s and 30s. Slater and Pauling themselves experienced and on many occasions talked about the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary research; and historians have legitimately illuminated their works by examining them in this broad context.3 Yet the careful analysis of their research notes and published papers reveals that Slater and Pauling were working in quite disparate disciplinary traditions, with di!erent approaches, for di!erent audiences, and towards di!erent goals. The aim of this paper is to explore their di!erent routes to a common destination*hybridisation*and thereby to explicate tensions existing between physics and chemistry amidst the institutional and conceptual overlapping of the two disciplines. (shrink)

The history of climate research in the 20th century has been characterised by a crucial shift from a geography-oriented, two-dimensional approach towards a physics-based, three-dimensional concept of climate. In the 1930s, the introduction of new technology, such as radiosondes, enabled climatologists to investigate the high atmosphere, which had previously been out of reach. This “conquest of the third dimension” challenged the surface-oriented, geographical notion of climate patterns and opened up climatology to a three-dimensional approach, which deeply changed the character (...) of climate research. Two decades later, by drilling deep into polar glaciers and using the downward vertical dimension as an archive of the earth's history, ice core scientists began to reconstruct past climates layer by layer. The data retrieved in deep glacial layers contributed crucially to a temporal expansion of climate history far beyond human timescales. However, the inaccessibility of glaciers and the practical challenges of bringing fragile fragments of ice into transnational networks of scientific exchange meant that this vertical extension of climate knowledge production proceeded through a range of new scientific practices, and was shaped by new forms of international collaboration. Furthermore, this vertical approach to glaciers also asked for a new understanding of glacier volume. Drawing on archival and printed sources, I argue that ice core research represented a second discovery of the third dimension, this time downwards into the depth of the earth's surface, but again with decisive consequences for the research practice, for collaboration politics, and for understandings of climate, spatially as well as temporally. (shrink)