Scientific discovery: The larger problem situation

Abstract

Present discussion of scientific discovery is in transition from a psychological idiom which reduced it from an irrational quasi-magical process to a more methodological idiom regarding it as a rational heuristic, if not a logic. The greatest obstacle to the latter endeavor is found to be a Romantic genre of introspective and anecdotal psychology. A more fruitful conceptual source is to be found in the classic tradition of ars inveniendi and its development into modern versions such as Dewey's pragmatic logic of inquiry and Gadamer's hermeneutic dialectic of question and answer. On this basis, a research program is sketched out for understanding scientific discovery as a rational heuristic in its ontological, psychological and methodological dimensions and for coming to terms with this phenomenon in the present cultural situation.