There’s a hidden catch to reading inspirational stories about individuals.
Reading them makes you feel humans can do anything.
Reading them can also make you feel like, any human but you can do anything.
It’s a paradox hidden inside reading the stories that has to do with the details. The more details we read the more real the achievements seem. But also, the more different the person and/or experiences that lead to them seem to be from who we are.
So, after reading an upbeat story about how Albert Einstein said something cool and then discovered something amazing, you can feel both inspired and demoralized at the same time.
The reason is because these stories focus on individuals more than capacities.
That makes sense because biographies and inspirational quote sites are selling peoples’ personalities as much as their ideas.
That’s not a bad thing. It’s just not helpful when you’re trying to learn practical discovery skills.
Instead, I want you to become the Einstein in your own story. So, we need to focus on things a little differently.
Let’s talk about human capacities and discovery.
If you read widely, you will see a lot of ideas about how to do something new.
You’ll see buzz words like innovation, invention, creativity, and insight.
Capacities are the mental and physical abilities and skills we have to get things done.
So, discovery capacities are abilities, that all people have, to discover new things.
I’ve identified four discovery capacities.
What makes each discovery capacity unique is that we are motivated to apply that ability for different reasons. So, we create different results depending on which capacity we use.
On the other hand, what every discovery capacity shares is that it gives us a way to create new things in science and technology.
Here are the four discovery capacities:
1. Innovation. You apply your capacity to innovate when you are motivated to improve the way something works. Better. Faster. Stronger. That’s all about innovation.
2. Invention. When you are motivated to build something useful you use your capacity for invention. An idea brought to life is the heart of invention.
3. Insight. Being motivated to get a more accurate understanding of the real world is when you deploy your capacity for insight. Insight gets rid of being wrong, being oblivious, and being confused.
4. Scientific Discovery. If you are motivated to explain the natural world then you will use your capacity for scientific discovery. What exists? Why does it exist? How does it work? Scientific discovery is finding the answers to those questions.
Although making scientific discoveries is our focus, all the capacities have a role to play in discovery. They build on and support each other.
For a long time, I held these two images in my mind. That and the famous photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue (which you might know too).
Making discoveries, through the lens of Einstein, seemed like something only mischievous, extraordinary people do.
But then I started hearing a phrase from one of my family members (they’re not in science).
It’s called “capacity-building”.
The United Nations defines capacity-building as, “the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources…to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world”.
I realized that to make discoveries we need exactly that.
The skills and processes to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing information world.
That’s why I call them discovery capacities. Because strengthening them is a capacity-building exercise for those who want to make scientific discoveries.
The four discovery capacities all support each other.
Sometimes you need to build a new tool (invent) to fill a knowledge gap (insight). Or you may need to improve how a system works (innovate) to create space for new knowledge to be found (scientific discovery).
Luckily, we all start out with a basic ability to do all these things.
That’s because basic human survival requires the skill to observe, adapt, build, and learn.
As we grow, and make new learning choices, we may specialize or strengthen some capacities more than others. But we never lack, or lose, those discovery capacities all together, unless we suffer a catastrophic injury.
We can also learn and develop specific techniques to improve our capacity.
But just remember, you’re always improving on a basic ability you already have. Not starting from zero. You’ve already got what it takes. But what you’ve got can get better.
Simply put, making a scientific discovery is something anyone can do, not just a group of elite science performers.
Discovering new things is a set of core human capacities we are born with.
So, own it. Grow it.
Keep your discovery capacities strong through practice.
Become your own Einstein.
Reflection Question
Building up your discovery capacity is about practice. Practicing which discovery capacity annoys you the most and why? Which one excites you the most and why?
If I told you there was a study that found what actions you take for the next 10 minutes determines whether or not you will make a scientific discovery in your life…how would you spend that time?
How does thinking about the impact of what your doing right now on your discovery potential make you feel? Guilty, curious, confused, even overwhelmed?
Unfortunately, no such study exists. Instead, there are plenty of biographies analyzing how the Einstein’s of the world spent their time.
Don’t get me wrong.
Getting inspired by previous scientific discoveries and the stories behind them is wonderful motivation.
But it doesn’t tell you how to spend the next 10 minutes of your life to make your own discoveries. For that you need an action plan.
So let me share the scientific discovery framework that I’ve developed, which will give you a plan. It’s helped me see how discovery gets done and it will help you too.
There are lots of parts to scientific discovery, but they all fit together in a logical whole.
In a series of posts, I’ll explain my framework for connecting those parts and how you can prioritize your efforts to get moving on making a discovery.
This first post lays out the big picture of scientific discovery. Get ready for an information download! Stick with it. Don’t worry if it feels like a lot. Shorter follow-up posts will guide you. Jump in and out of the series anywhere – the posts are all standalone. You can take it all in as you have time.
Let’s get to it.
I’ve identified six core areas that power scientific discovery:
1. Discovery repertoire. The personal portfolio of techniques that you use to get science done is your scientist’s repertoire. There are four sections to your internal portfolio: how you think about your science (mindset), what tasks you know how to complete to get science done (activities), the recipes you have for combining outcomes with actions (skills), and what you know (knowledge). When you have a solid plan, but still don’t make progress on your science it means you need to strengthen a weak part of your repertoire.
2. Discovery capacities. Learning new things in science and technology is driven by four human capacities: innovation, invention, insight, and scientific discovery. Capacities get different results because they are driven by different motivations. Innovation motivates us to improve the way something works. Invention motivates us to build devices that will do something useful. Insight motivates us to change how we see the world. Scientific discovery motivates us to explain how the world works. Insight and scientific discovery are core capacities that build on each other.
3. Discovery vital qualities. The difference between a scientific discovery and regular scientific research is that a new discovery-level scientific finding will have at least one of three vital qualities: It will shift our perspective on the world (be radical), it will link knowledge to make a broader range of predictions about the world (be universal), and/or it will be new knowledge (be novel). Your work should have one of these qualities as an objective to aim for discovery-level science.
4. Discovery impact classes. Scientific discovery intuitively feels more high impact than regular science. That impact lies on a continuum from low to high, determined by how many vital qualities a discovery captures. Minor class discoveries possess only one of the three vital qualities. Major class discoveries possess at least two and legacy class discoveries must have all three. Science spans from regular research to legacy class discoveries on an incremental spectrum defined by these qualities. So, start small and build up to the big discoveries.
5. Discovery learning categories. Scientific discovery learns something new about the world. What you learn falls into three categories: something about an unknown object (object-type), something about the properties of an object (attribute-type), or something about how and why the world works the way it does (mechanism-type). Some categories are easier to make discoveries in because the learning curve is smaller.
6. Discovery evolution phases. Most scientific discoveries evolve through five phases, which I call the discovery cycle. First, you ask an unanswered question (question). Then you form ideas for an answer (ideation). You make those ideas into tests in the real world (articulation). You run the tests and evaluate the results (evaluation). And if the results repeatedly prove true then they become a scientific discovery (verification). Troubleshooting your scientific discovery progress is easier if you know what phase you are in because unique problems trip up scientists at each phase.
The framework I’ve developed lets you craft a scientific discovery action plan, troubleshoot your progress, and connect specific activities and techniques with the results you want to achieve.
The simplest starting point? Aim for a minor class, attribute-type discovery that is universal. That represents a baby step from current science to something new. And if you hit an obstacle check your insight in a systematic way and seek out techniques to boost you from one phase of scientific discovery to the next.
No matter where you start, be inspired by the scientific discovery stories of others, but don’t stay stuck in them. Discovery isn’t a sightseeing tour through known territory. It’s a push toward unknown territory.
Simply put, to make a scientific discovery you need a plan for how to tackle the unknown, not a map of the known.
Take Action
Once you’ve got a framework and a plan, spend the next 10 minutes taking action. You’ll be 10 minutes closer to making your next discovery.
Simply put, they kill people and break things. That’s what they’re designed to do.
Stick with me. I’m laying this out because it will be the science example in upcoming posts on scientific discovery. So…
Having nuclear weapons around makes life dangerous.
You never know when someone might accidentally kill people and break things with one. You never know when someone might kill people and break things with one on purpose. It’s just a bad piece of technology.
Having them lie around instead of getting rid of them is bad.
But having a massive pile of the stuff that helps make them go boom, plutonium, makes a bad problem even badder.
Why?
Because even if you get rid of the current batch of nuclear weapons, all that extra plutonium makes it easy to build and stockpile them again.
If the world were more convenient we could get rid of all that plutonium, like putting leftovers down a garbage disposal. Done and dusted.
Too bad getting rid of plutonium is not that easy.
Once plutonium is made it’s currently impossible to get rid of it fast. That’s because plutonium can’t be destroyed in any safe and easy way. You have to wait for physics to run its course.
The plutonium used to make weapons is radioactive. That means it naturally disintegrates over time. Every isotope disintegrates at its own speed. For plutonium-239, the isotope most commonly used to make nuclear weapons, the time it takes for half of the plutonium you have to disintegrate away is about 24,000 years.
If the average person lives 100 years. That means it will take about two hundred and forty generations for half of the plutonium we’ve created for nuclear weapons to decay on its own and go away. We have no way to speed up that natural process with science and technology we have now.
That much stockpiled plutonium is equal, by mass, to about four hundred and twelve Fiat 500 Sport cars (what I happen to drive).
I love Fiats. But I don’t want the equivalent of 400 of those little Fiats sitting around, for two hundred and forty generations, when they are ultra-explosive killing people and breaking things machines.
Still, that’s the state we are in.
Let’s call it the “plutonium disposition problem”.
Luckily, lots of people realize having that much raw material to build nuclear weapons hanging around is a badder thing than just having nuclear weapons.
But discovering new ways to get rid of old plutonium is tough.
Many people have thought about how to deal with this extra plutonium. And get rid of the plutonium from any new weapons that get taken apart.
But plutonium disposition solutions have stalled out because of politics, money, and difficulty. One of the most popular solutions is to mix this plutonium with other things to make it less dangerous when it’s stored together in large quantities. Next put that mixture in special barrels, bury it in one or two underground facilities, and permanently seal it.
Then you wait for physics to work its magic and hope nothing goes wrong in the meantime, like natural disasters or someone breaking into the facility and treating it like a gold mine, only for plutonium.
But the ideal solution would be to discover a way to get rid of the world’s excess bomb plutonium within one human generation, using a non-self-destructive, sustainable, and ethical method.
I say within one generation because I think that’s the maximum amount of time any social agreement can be maintained, remembered, and honored. If all goes well. Longer than that and life is too unpredictable.
Simply put, nuclear weapons are bad and getting rid of extra plutonium prevents the problem from sticking around even after the last nuclear weapon is gone.
Plutonium may be a case of going from bad to badder. But it makes for a great real-world example of an area that desperately needs new discoveries to shift the balance.
Have you have ever been on the receiving end of a colleague, boss, or even stranger sitting next to you on a plane (ah, the good old days before coronavirus), asking you questions like,
“But what impact will your work have?”
“Can you study something more interesting/important?”, or even,
“Who cares?”
If so, then you have come up against a problem all researchers, scientists, and citizen scientists face: How to try and do the best possible, most high impact, most important science you are capable of as often as possible.
What you are aiming for is a scientific discovery. And what well-meaning acquaintances and strangers are asking for is the same thing.
But how do you do that? Trying to aim that high can seem overwhelming.
The Problem: Many existing definitions of scientific discovery are good for textbooks, but not for project planning, follow-through, or troubleshooting.
My Solution: Define “scientific discovery” so that you can achieve it with training and algorithms, and perform quantitative studies to probe it.
The purpose of this post is to lay out all the key components that will help us train ourselves to become better discoverers. You can see this framework drawn in my concept sketchnote below.
My hand drawn sketchnote of the “architecture of scientific discovery” showing all the important parts of the process. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
There is a lot of ground to cover, so in this post I am going to give short descriptions of everything in the big picture.
In the following 22 (!) posts in the series, I will drill down into each of the 18 parts in more detail, with examples taken from science history.
Now let’s jump in…
Group 1:
Discovery Capacities
Scientific discovery is just one of four human capacities for discovery in science and technology.
Let’s zoom in on the discovery architecture picture I’ve drawn above.
A close-up of my sketchnote showing the four discovery capacities at the core of the discovery architecture. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
As human beings, we have the capacity to discover new things in science and technology. These discovery capacities form the main part of the structure and they house all our abilities and knowledge about science and technology.
These discovery capacities fall into four types—insight, invention, innovation, and scientific discovery. The main differences between types are their results and our reasons and motivations for pursuing a discovery.
So let me give you a definition of insight, a definition of invention, a definition of innovation, and a definition of scientific discovery.
Insight
Definition of insight:
“Insight” is refining the accuracy of your perspective of the real world.
Getting a more accurate perspective, or “achieving insight,” is accomplished in one of three ways. You can add something new to your perspective that you were not aware of before. You can correct something that you misperceived. Or you can clarify something that you only vaguely understood.
Motivation: “I want to…change how I see the world.”
Invention
Definition of invention:
”Invention” is building a machine or process that creates a previously unobtainable result.
Creating a previously impossible result, or “inventing something new”, is brought about by focusing on three aspects of what you build. You want to build something that has not been built that way before. You want to build something that does what it was built to do. And you want what you built to create something that a machine or process like it has not created before.
Motivation: “I want to…build a device that will do something useful.”
Innovation
Definition of innovation:
”Innovation” is improving the functionality of a process or device.
Refining how things work, or “innovating”, is really about making things work better more easily. You can make something function more efficiently. You can make something run faster or with fewer resources. You can make something more likely to produce what it was designed to produce. And you can make something produce a higher quality version of what it was designed to produce.
Motivation: “I want to…improve the way things work.”
Scientific Discovery
Definition of scientific discovery:
”Scientific Discovery” is finding the evidence, interaction, and causes of things that exist in the natural world.
Learning something new about nature, or “making a scientific discovery,” relies on three things. You must acquire knowledge. You must demonstrate that the phenomena exist using evidence and statistical or logical analysis. And the knowledge you acquire must include one or more element of the radical, the universal, or the novel (those are defined in the next section).
Motivation: “I want to…explain how the world works.”
In this framework “applied science” can be defined as a combination of mastering the capacities for invention and innovation, while “fundamental science” or “basic science” can be defined as a combination of mastering the capacities for insight and scientific discovery. By “science” I mean the physical sciences (e.g., astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, data science, engineering, geology, medicine, paleontology, physics, etc.), the social sciences (e.g., anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, etc.), and mathematics.
(Also, you might wonder why insight is listed as its own discovery capacity since it is integral to the other three discovery capacities, invention, innovation, and scientific discovery. This is true. However, it’s more useful to put it on an equal footing with the other three capacities. It’s easier to develop training protocols, algorithms, and quantitative metrics to explore discovery methods, all goals for developing this framework.)
Group 2:
Scientific Discovery Vital Qualities
There are three qualities any scientific study or research must have, or it can’t be called a “scientific discovery”.
The three scientific discovery qualities are the foundation on which we can build any kind of discovery.
A close-up of my sketchnote showing the three qualities that form the foundation of defining something as a scientific discovery. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
They are integral to recognizing discovery and generating discoveries.
These three essential qualities form the basis of what makes scientific discovery different from everyday scientific investigation and scientific research.
How is scientific discovery different from scientific investigation? Scientific discovery has a higher and more long-lasting impact on the evolution of science. So let’s define the vital qualities that embody that impact and enduring nature.
Radical
Definition of the radical quality of scientific discovery:
The “radical” quality of scientific discovery means that the new knowledge gained as a result of the discovery represents a meaningful shift in perspective from the previous state of knowledge.
Role in scientific impact and longevity: Scientific discovery is radical—it changes the perspective of science in one of three ways. Something can be added to what we know. Something can be rejected from what we thought we knew. Or something that we know can be changed. By impacting our scientific perspective, the radicality of scientific discovery opens up new avenues of research and creates or ends long-standing practices and beliefs.
Universal
Definition of the universal quality of scientific discovery:
The “universal” quality of scientific discovery means that the knowledge acquired as a result of discovery is valid and reliable and that the knowledge gained has predictive or descriptive power in a range of physical situations.
Role in scientific impact and longevity: Scientific discoveries have a broad impact because the new knowledge they bring has a range of application. The universal nature of a scientific discovery lies on a spectrum from “proximal” to “distal”. “Proximal” means that the new knowledge can be applied to a broad range of areas with few changes to its verified form. “Distal” means that the new knowledge discovered can only be applied to areas and phenomena closely or directly related to the area in which the discovery was made, or that to apply it to other areas requires a lot of translation. The scientific discoveries with the most direct universal appeal have the longest legacies.
Novel
Definition of the novel quality of scientific discovery:
The “novel” quality of scientific discovery means that the knowledge obtained through the discovery has not been previously shown to exist, in a reproducible way, by observation or experimentation.
Role in scientific impact and longevity: Scientific discoveries electrify areas of science because they bring something new to the table. And when those new elements are verified, they shape future research activities and ways of thinking.
The impact effects of scientific discoveries and their longevity, as forces that shape research practice, effort, and interest, are embodied in the three vital qualities at the foundation of the scientific discovery architecture. They give scientific discovery it’s je ne sais quoi factor that inspires the layperson and the scientist alike.
Group 3:
Scientific Discovery Impact Classes
The impact and significance of all scientific discoveries can be grouped into three classes.
The purpose of discovery is progress in some area (understanding, outcomes, effectiveness, and knowledge as we saw from the section on the four discovery capacities above).
The discovery classes represent broad categories that help identify the level of impact (or progress) that our discoveries are capable of achieving or fostering.
These classes, therefore, overarch the specific categories of scientific discoveries.
A close-up of my sketchnote showing the three discovery impact classes that overach all scientific discovery and describe a discovery’s effect and longevity. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
In particular, the discovery classes encompass three different levels of impact, from wide-ranging to narrow, as described in their definitions below, and as represented by the fact that the three domes of discovery impact classes are nested in my sketchnote diagram.
Minor
Definition of a minor impact class scientific discovery:
A “minor” class discovery meets the criteria for any one of the three vital qualities of scientific discovery—radical, universal, or novel.
Minor scientific discoveries are either radical, universal, or novel, but not all three at once. Therefore, they have an impact beyond ordinary scientific investigation, but their impact is limited.
Major
Definition of a major impact class scientific discovery:
A “major” class discovery meets any two of the three criteria for the vital qualities of scientific discovery—radical, universal, or novel.
Major scientific discoveries are either radical and universal, or radical and novel, or universal and novel, etc. They have two of the three vital qualities, but are missing the third one. As a result, their impact tends to be more wide-spread than minor class discoveries, but not as high impact as they could be if they embodied all three qualities.
Legacy
Definition of a legacy impact class scientific discovery:
A “legacy” class discovery meets all three criteria for the vital qualities of scientific discovery—radical, universal, and novel.
Legacy class discoveries are the full package—radical, universal, and novel. The impact of legacy class scientific discoveries is wide-ranging and long-lasting. These are the hardest scientific discoveries to achieve, but the ones with the greatest value.
Group 4:
Scientific Discovery Learning Categories
The types of scientific discoveries you could make can be grouped into three categories.
The learning categories are specific to only one of the discovery capacities, scientific discovery (they are not intended to be applied, by analogy, to insight, invention, or innovation).
These categories of scientific discovery divide the field of knowledge obtained through scientific discovery into three areas. These areas are determined by the kind of information you hope to gain, or your learning objective.
Object
Definition of the object type scientific discovery:
An “object” scientific discovery is acquiring knowledge about the existence of a new object in nature.
Learning Goal: Answers the question, “Does something exist?”
Attribute
Definition of the attribute type scientific discovery:
An “attribute” scientific discovery is acquiring knowledge about the characteristics, properties, and/or traits of an object or process in nature.
Learning Goal: Answers the question, “What is something like?”
Mechanism
Definition of the mechanism type scientific discovery:
A “mechanism” scientific discovery is acquiring knowledge about the causes, connections, interactions, and/or sequences of objects and attributes in nature.
Learning Goal: Answers the question, “How does something work?” and/or “Why does something happen?”
A close-up of my sketchnote showing the different types of discoveries you can make as central to the architecture of discovery. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
Let’s look at this part of the discovery architecture more closely, as shown above in my sketchnote drawing.
The scientific discovery learning goals are shown under the dome of the scientific discovery classes because they can fall under (i.e., be impacted by or represented in) all the classes of scientific discoveries.
Another way to think of it is that the scientific discovery classes are umbrella terms that cover all the categories or types of scientific discoveries you could make.
(Again, this is just the overview, in future posts I will talk about each of these in more detail and it will begin to make more sense as you see examples and further discussion.)
Onward to the last group I want to cover in this post…
Group 5:
Scientific Discovery Cycle
(Evolution Phases)
Most scientific discoveries must pass through five phases.
All of the above groups—the discovery capacities, the scientific discovery classes, the scientific discovery categories, and the scientific discovery qualities—form the main architecture of scientific discovery.
You can think of these like a very old and sturdy building, where every brick and design element of the structure is built up out of our application of the discovery capacities, classes, categories, and qualities and the knowledge, abilities, devices, and processes that we have created as a result.
There is one more important element in the overall architecture, and that is represented by the sun shown in the upper right hand corner of my sketchnote illustration.
A close-up of my sketchnote showing how the scientific discovery cycle illuminates all other aspects of discovery. (Artist: Bernadette K. Cogswell. For reprint permission, contact me.)
The sun represents the process that drives scientific discovery, or the “scientific discovery cycle”, which shines a light on all the other elements of the architecture so that we can become aware of them and manipulate them in the course of running our projects as scientists.
Below I summarize each of the five evolutionary stages of the scientific discovery cycle.
Question
Definition of the question phase of the scientific discovery process:
The “question phase of scientific discovery” is the stage in the process when the question to be answered, or problem to be solved, is explicitly defined.
Purpose of Stage: Define what you want to find, create, or explain.
Ideation
Definition of the ideation phase of the scientific discovery process:
The “ideation phase of scientific discovery” is the stage in the process when a possible solution or solutions is conceived of to answer the discovery question or solve the discovery problem.
Purpose of Stage: Come up with a guess for how you will find it, create it, or explain it.
Articulation
Definition of the articulation phase of the scientific discovery process:
The “articulation phase of scientific discovery” is the stage in the process when at least one proposed solution is put into a form that can be tested in the real world.
Purpose of Stage: Write an equation or description, or build or code a prototype, embodying your answer.
Evaluation
Definition of the evaluation phase of the scientific discovery process:
The “evaluation phase of scientific discovery” is the stage in the process when the testable solution is probed and its success in answering the discovery question, or solving the discovery problem, is assessed.
Purpose of Stage: Test your equation, description, code, or prototype to see if it answers your question.
Verification
Definition of the verification phase of the scientific discovery process:
The “verification phase of scientific discovery” is the stage in the process when the best available solution to answer the discovery question, or solve the discovery problem, is confirmed to be accurate and reliable by multiple independent analyses.
Purpose of Stage: Subject your “discovery” to public scrutiny and see if it holds up to testing.
Note that, the way I have defined it, the scientific discovery cycle is different from the scientific method.
The scientific method focuses on how to obtain valid and reliable information about the world. But it is not concerned with the impact of that knowledge.
The scientific discovery cycle (or scientific discovery process) is concerned with the impact of the knowledge obtained and its purpose is to obtain knowledge of a certain minimum impact level (namely, knowledge that is either radical, novel, or universal and, therefore, at least meets the standard for a minor class discovery).
The scientific method would be used to obtain relevant insight at various phases within the scientific discovery cycle (such as during articulation, evaluation, and verification).
Therefore, the scientific method is one set of activities in the scientist’s repertoire, which they can use to help them complete the evolution stages in the scientific discovery cycle. They are connected, but distinct.
Summary
Phew!
That brings us to the end of my overview of the architecture of discovery that I have built as a way to develop better discovery training protocols and quantitative methods to identify patterns and correlations in discovery processes.
If you are someone who loves algorithms or self-improvement, then this architecture and way of conceptualizing discovery and how to achieve it is for you.
So much good stuff to talk about!
I’m really looking forward to writing the rest of the posts in this series. Having these new words and concepts in my discovery arsenal has already helped me organize and conduct my research projects in a new way. And it makes extracting nuggets of insight from examples of scientific discovery much more productive.
To wrap up this post, let me give you the very, very short, bullet-list version of “the architecture of scientific discovery” that I covered in this post:
Scientific discovery is just one of four human discovery capacities—including insight, invention, and innovation—in science and technology.
There are three vital qualities—radical, universal, and novel—any scientific study must have, or it should not be called a “scientific discovery.”
The significance of scientific discoveries can be grouped into three impact classes—minor, major, and legacy—which range from low to high impact.
The types of scientific discoveries you could make can be grouped into three learning categories—object, attribute, or mechanism—based on the information gained.
Most scientific discoveries must pass through five evolution stages—question, ideation, articulation, evaluation, and verification—to succeed.
With all these categories and types, it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing things as black and white, or just buckets to assign things too.
But the definitions and concepts I’ve come up with work well because they allow us to see scientific discovery as a continuum of insight, from narrow to broad, from low impact to high impact, from fundamental to applied.
Every scientific investigation, every research study, every time you use the scientific method, you are placing yourself somewhere on that continuum of insight. Discovery is always just a little way further along that scale. The question you should be asking yourself is not “Am I making, or trying to make, a discovery?” it’s “Where on the discovery spectrum am I working right now?”
So next time someone challenges you on your impact, dream brave and think (or tell them), “I’m working on some (minor/major) research questions right now, but my dream is to leave a legacy discovery for future generations to build on.”
And hopefully with this discovery architecture in your mental repertoire, you will someday be able to do just that.
Bernadette K. Cogswell, “The Architecture of Scientific Discovery: Overview of the Process – On how to define and categorize all aspects of scientific discovery”, The Insightful Scientist Blog, June 13, 2020, https://insightfulscientist.com/blog/2020/architecture-of-scientific-discovery-overview.
[Page feature photo: A quiet and quirky cabin sits among the mountains. Photo by Torbjorn Sandbakk on Unsplash.]
Marshmallows are exquisite probes of the human psyche.
So, here’s a question: what relationship do marshmallows, tape, string, scientific discovery, and uncooked spaghetti all have in common? (And in case you’re wondering, this week’s feature photo is a bundle of uncooked spaghetti photographed from above.)
The answer to the question above comes from answering another question as posed in the book by journalist Warren Berger A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. I came across Berger’s book while doing preliminary research for formulating my discovery cycle (which I’ll log entries on for each phase of the cycle I’m using in early 2019). It was a welcome reference entry for the first phase of the cycle, asking questions. Questions are what ignite the process of scientific discovery because they express and focus the desire to know more about something, inspiring us to act. It turns out that asking questions about how to ask questions was trickier to find information on that I thought it would be. It’s not something we spend much conscious time or effort on. We worry more about answering questions well rather than asking questions well.
So back to Berger’s provocative question, which was the following: “How do you build a tower that doesn’t collapse (even after you put the marshmallow on top)?” (p.120)
I had heard of this story (it’s often in the news), so when I came across marshmallows and kindergartners in Berger’s book, I assumed I already knew the punchline: if you are patient with a question and mull it over it will lead to more positive outcomes. It turns out I was dead wrong. When it comes to asking questions, patience is your friend. But when it comes to answering questions, instant gratification seems to be the way to go.
Here’s what the marshmallow tower studies have found: groups that engage in many trials throughout the allotted time, building, failing, and trying again, on average end up with taller structures. Kindergarteners jump right in to this approach, preferring a hands-on tactic and prototyping early and often to try and succeed. In contrast, other groups, like MBA students, spend the majority of their allotted time discussing how they should approach and try to solve the problem. This results in fewer actual attempts and on average shorter structures (or no successful structures at all!) as a result.
It seems then that Berger’s book not only discusses how and what kind of questions spark breakthroughs (which I’ll cover in a later log entry), but also how best to start trying to answer those questions: trial and error. If you’ve read many of my log entries on the site, you’ll know favoring trial and error and failure is fast becoming a recurrent theme. But it’s always good to have reminders. This is part of the intent of the ARTEMISvirtual reality software being built: to give you a way to build mental models of what you are trying to discover fast and often. And if you read much in the startup (like Eric Reis’ Lean Start Up), software (like Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time), or entrepreneurial arenas (like Jake Knapp’s Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days) then you will know that rapid prototyping to test out answers and learn by getting immediate feedback is all the rage right now.
“I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.”
(Thomas Edison, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 1890)
He’s talking about theories, not experiments. Three-thousand-theories. As a theoretical particle physicist that really resonates by “quantifying” the “degree of try” it might take to even think up a good answer to a good question. Besides, maybe if there’s a marshmallow at the end of every attempt, I’ll get better at generating my own 3,000 theories to find the 2 that work. And if I’m smart, I’ll go after that marshmallow today and not wait until tomorrow.
I’m finding the most difficult (and intimidating) part of pursuing discovery to be coming up with new ideas, at least on days when my “systematic mind” is team lead. On these days I stick to knowns and try to refit combinations of knowns, or incrementally push ideas a little toward the boundary of the unknown parameter space. A gentle shift here, a nudge there, but nothing really addresses the underlying discovery level shifts needed. It’s as if I’m pushing the same pebbles around the table expecting an oil painting to appear.
On other days, systematic’s co-director “imaginative mind”, takes hold and I am overwhelmed with ideas, but drowning in the ability to sift and evaluate them. At those time it’s as if there’s a canvas in front of me wild with splotches of thought, but no clear scale against which to weigh the relative merits or value of each, a splotch at a time.
In essence, it’s impossible to hold these two perspectives in mind at the same time. But it’s also difficult to capture the outputs of each perspective in a way that lets me glide back and forth between them so that I can make meaningful progress on the crux of pursuing discovery: conceiving of something new and having the prudence to recognize that idea’s significance. Which sounds to me like it’s time to find a good tool to augment the process. As the saying goes, is there an app for that?
Certainly, there are mind maps, endless note taking software, pen and paper, LEGOs, clay, foam models, scientific visualization and more. But none of these are purely designed to foster human conceptualization, let alone human conceptualization about Nature, through the modality of science. In particular, as I’ve started to read more deeply into research on scientific discovery, and as I think back on my own experiences and difficulties in ideation and follow-through for truly novel ideas, I’m struck by how all the strategies revolve around mental models and reasoning skills; in other words, messy, qualitative, human thought, not structured, quantitative, human calculation.
When I then add to the mix the fact that I know this will need to be able to work with speed and to foster thinking upideas as much as thinkingaboutideas and workingwithideas … Well then, I conceive of a tool I’ve nicknamed ARTEMIS, Artificial Reality Tool for the Enhancement and Manipulation of Insight in Science, whose job it is to help you recognize the undiscovered, both in Nature (i.e., scientific discovery) and in your own understanding of Nature (i.e., scientific insight).
I envision this tool will work in virtual reality, where images, sounds, and direct hand manipulations will be the mode of operation; feeding your perceptual and sensory-motor mind as much as your cognition to aid in ideation and evaluation; moving language, computer code, and mathematical symbolics to the background, all of which are slower and cognitively more cumbersome. Most importantly I imagine it will run in different modes and allow you to enter your own research questions as various abstractions designed to trigger different innate reasoning skills linked to insight and discovery. And it will allow you to evaluate among options at times when you are a fountain of ideas or to find new streams of thought on days when the well of inspiration runs dry.
I already have in mind a few neutrino questions to use as test cases, to hone, refine, and infuse ARTEMIS with everything I learn in my pursuit of the process of scientific discovery. The power of virtual reality as a serious research tool remains untapped, especially in its ability to redefine the relationship between humans and computation.
In the act of discovery one can think loosely of three phases: (1) conceptualization, (2) calculation, and (3) interpretation. (I take here a different and more physics theorist-based view of the phases of discovery than philosophers, psychologists, or historians might.) Much, much work has been done on automation in physics, and tools abound for precision calculations. Interpretation is also receiving its due with the advent of numerous tools for scientific visualization. But conceptualization remains neglected. Perhaps because it requires augmenting human thought rather than human action. Whatever the case, I am designing ARTEMIS to fill that gap and serve as a tool on the path to scientific discovery.
And as for the name, perhaps a bit of a lucky chance that I could think up such a quaint acronym; for in pursuit of discovery, who better to have as a traveling companion than the Greek goddess of the hunt.
