Memorizing the definition of “scientific discovery” lets you actually make one
I’ll make you a deal. I will give you one million dollars if you are the first person to bring me an authentic, Trendel-made, lime green pogificator and post proof to my website that you have an original one by the last Friday in December.
Easy, right?
It might be.
Or it might not.
Who knows? Because you probably don’t know what a pogificator is. Or if it’s a real thing (it’s not). Or if Trendel is a real place (it’s not).
So, even if I extended the imaginary offer on my website to every year for the next three years it won’t help.
Of course, this is just a made-up example of a fake deal to make a point (pogificators only exist in the world of our fictional citizen scientist Mrs. Mulliver).
You can’t produce something when you don’t know what that thing is.
It’s a silly example, but discovery works the same. If you’ve got a wicked social or science problem you want to solve, you can’t make a scientific discovery if you don’t know what a scientific discovery is.
To go out and get started you need to have a good definition.
I’ve come up with my own definition by thinking about my physics research, research my co-workers do, and reading about discovery. I’d like to share it with you as part of my scientific discovery framework series of posts.
Scientific discovery has three essential qualities that regular research does not.
To be a discovery a finding doesn’t have to have all three qualities (though how many it has determines its impact). But it does have to have at least one of those qualities.
The three discovery qualities are:
- Radical. Radical means that the new science finding shifts our perspective on the world. How we look at things before the discovery is different from how we look at the world after. Radicality makes scientific discovery high impact.
- Universal. Universal means that the new finding extends knowledge from one area to a wider class of things, not just one individual case. Making more general predictions about the world is easier after a scientific discovery. Universality gives scientific discovery a broad impact.
- Novel. Novel means that the focus of the discovery has not been verified to be true before (and it may not even have been recognized or known before the discovery is announced). How much we know about the world grows after a scientific discovery and that discovery drives more growth. Novelty grants scientific discovery a lasting impact.
Defining these qualities gives you a criteria for knowing “discovery” from “not discovery” so you can spend more time on discovery activities.
I had information overload when I first started trying to pull actionable understanding from reading stuff about scientific discovery. All that data jumbled and confused my brain. Sometimes I gave up learning.
It was like asking a simple question on Google, “how to improve insight”, and ending up watching weird perky YouTube videos by a corporate coach about insight reports for marketing teams. You wonder, “What just happened?”
But when I came up with a targeted definition of scientific discovery it made gathering ideas doing-centered. I started to be able to link actions to outcomes.
Having a definition in your head lets you tell apart science examples of discovery (useful role models) from science that is invention or innovation or incremental gains (not useful role models for discovery).
Ironically, even though I spent a year designing a new definition of scientific discovery, I didn’t memorize it right away. Every time I sat down to learn more, I had to go back and look at my own original Microsoft Word document with notes.
It was frustrating. It made me feel like I was starting from scratch each time. It slowed me down. A lot.
I hadn’t taken my own advice: I had put in the effort to gain some insight, but then I went back to being confused because the definition of discovery remained vague in my head.
When I finally memorized my definition, it was like someone put a magic prism or filter in my brain. That laser like focus from having a clear definition of scientific discovery let me pursue it with single-minded devotion. Even if “devotion” only meant 20 minutes a week.
Simply put, memorizing the definition of what a “scientific discovery” is lets you actually make one.
Because you can’t produce something when you don’t know what it is.
Reflection Question
Wander down the rabbit hole of the internet for 5 minutes and find one example labelled a “scientific discovery”. Think about if it is radical, universal, and/or novel. Now think about something you’d like to discover. How would it capture some of those qualities?
Related Links
On The Insightful Scientist (InSci) website
Blog (The Scientist’s Log)
- Mini-series overview post
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- Previous mini-series post
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- Next mini-series post
- Making a scientific discovery means you can always define a clear before and after
- Other mini-series posts
- Making a scientific discovery means you can predict more about a lot of things
- Making a scientific discovery means you are not the only one who can see and do something
- Mega-series overview post:
- Top related posts
Research (Research Spotlight)
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How-To’s (The Scientist’s Repertoire)
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Infographics (The Illustrated Scientist)
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Printables (Spark Points)
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Other blogs
zen habits (achieving purpose)
Farnam Street (famous insights)
Around the web
- Scientific Discovery, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- How to Not Find What You’re Looking For, Scientific American
How to cite this post
Bernadette K. Cogswell, “Memorizing the definition of “scientific discovery” lets you actually make one”, The Insightful Scientist Blog, March 26, 2021.
[Page feature photo: Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash.]