Thinking about evolution: combinatorial play as a strategy for exercising scientific creativity

Abstract

An enduring focus in education on how scientists formulate experiments and ‘do science’ in the laboratory has excluded a vital element of scientific practice: the creative and imaginative thinking that generates models and testable hypotheses. In this case study, final‐year biomedical sciences university students were invited to create and justify a taxonomy of selected vertebrates on the basis of their brain organisation, as part of an exercise exploring the evolution of embryonic development. While raising a number of issues surrounding the context and methods of comparative zoology, this exercise also invoked a set of cognitive processes that can neither be adequately characterised as role‐play nor critical thinking. By contrast, the act of formulating and justifying taxonomy identifies a style of creative thought that is a prerequisite for hypothesis formation. A defining characteristic of this exercise is that it engages activities that are independent of disciplinary perspective. This flexibility in approach may provide a route through to defining what qualifies as a creative teaching exercise in science.