In the Name of Discovery
In my first-round literature search on what is scientific discovery, which yielded about thirty items, there were many well-known items like Thomas Kuhn’s ever-recycled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I culled that to a first reading list of twelve, with one goal in mind: compile definitions of what constitutes a “scientific discovery”. This proved more elusive than I thought. Many articles used, but did not define, the term. One text stood out though. A Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on scientific discovery.
I had already formulated my working definition of scientific discovery before reading these, mentioned in a previous post: “And here, by ‘discovery’, I most definitely mean being the first to conceive of and correctly articulate a previously inconceivable truth about Nature, and not merely the products of any kind of scientific inquiry…” This is necessarily a first step in attempting to identify discovery paths and apply this in neutrino physics. One has to know what constitutes “a discovery” so that you can prudently choose an open neutrino research question, which actually has discovery as a goal.
The element my definition seems to have, which sometimes others do not (though I have yet to spend some time delving into more rigorous philosophy and psychology articles, so this will evolve no doubt), is the element that a discovery cannot have previously been conceived. Of course, this would be tough to prove, but the spirit of it is important. In my definition, discovery requires an element of radical originality. The nearest definition I’ve seen to mine is perhaps hinted at by Schikore in the Encyclopedia entry when he references the idea of “historical creativity” from psychologist Margaret Boden: ‘psychological creativity’ is “new, surprising and important to the particular person who comes up with it” (I might have called this insight); ‘historical creativity’ is “radically novel, surprising, and important—it is generated for the first time (Boden 2004).”
So why also the “first timeness” in my definition? Well there’s a saying that if you aim for the stars at least you’ll land on the moon. The more ambitious the goal, the more likely it is to drive some innovation and progress as necessary by-products. So, for now, I stand by my definition. But I’ll continue to read, learn, work, and listen.
In the meantime, it seems scientific discovery is a little like truth and beauty—you know them when you see them, but it’s hard to define them. In the Schikore entry, early on, it comments about the intimate relationship between scientific inquiry (which I interpret as the “scientific method”) and scientific discovery. Perhaps there’s something to that. Perhaps it’s all just in a name. And maybe the Bard was right:
“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself…
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.”
Perhaps “discovery”, by any another name, would still be as sweet once achieved.
And it’s merely the name “discovery”, and all its unfortunate connotations of genius and luck, that is the enemy of letting discovery find kinship in or own individual houses.