Scientific discovery represents a fundamental element of the progress of knowledge and is responsible for numerous innovations, inventions and advances in society. Scientific discoveries are often based on the addition of new facts to a system of existing knowledge, and they can also be made by reinterpreting or refining pre-existing ideas, concepts and methods. They can occur spontaneously or be triggered by questions, such as those raised by Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance and James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic induction. Moreover, discoveries may be the result of various collaborations and the sharing of ideas among scientists.
The process of scientific discovery is not rational, and this fact underlies much philosophical debate about it. Until recently, there was wide agreement that scientific discovery can be narrowly defined as the “eureka moment” and that this moment is unanalyzable. The main disagreements, however, revolved around whether the process of articulating and developing a happy thought (the colligation in Whewell’s terms) is or is not a part of discovery proper and whether or not the generative justification of discoveries can be made explicit.
As philosophers have become increasingly attuned to actual scientific practices, there has been a renewed interest in the concept of heuristics, which are rules that guide the search for new ideas. There is also growing concern that discoveries can be triggered by theory-induced speculation and experimentation during pre-paradigm periods or in the face of paradigm crisis. These new approaches to the philosophy of discovery are not only philosophically interesting, but they can lead to important applications in medicine and engineering and can help improve scientific research policies.