Scientific discovery occurs in a wide range of disciplines, including astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. Scientific discoveries are important to the human endeavor in many ways, ranging from developing new medications and improving medical treatments to identifying new genetic diseases and finding new methods for measuring longitude.
Early modern natural and experimental philosophers like Bacon, Descartes, and Newton expounded general accounts of the processes that produce scientific knowledge. Their ideas became the basis for later philosophies of scientific discovery, which differed greatly from one another.
Several of these philosophies asserted that scientific discovery involves non-analyzable creative acts of gifted genius. Other philosophies argued that scientific discoveries are the results of extended and structured processes. These philosophies of discovery sought to describe the reasoning processes involved in knowledge generation and articulation, and they assumed that these reasoning processes are sufficiently systematic to be called “logical”.
More recently, scholars have shifted away from these philosophies. Most now argue that a philosophy of discovery is possible, although they differ in their approaches to the question. Advocates of methodologies of discovery generally rely on a distinction between different justification procedures, and between “generative” justification (the justification that is used in the process of generating new knowledge) and “consequential” justification (the justification that is applied to the process of testing new knowledge). Some scholars further divide the distinction into three contexts for exploration, invention, and justification, while others redraw the boundaries between them. Regardless of the approach, most scholars of scientific discovery combine philosophical analyses of the process with empirical work on actual human cognition.
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