Discovery, Creativity, and Problem-Solving

The thesis that creative discovery is amenable to rational inquiry as opposed to accounts of irrational bursts of genius - has not been popular this century. This is due to two factors: a romantic belief in creative genius and the influence of logical empiricism in the early twentieth century, which ruled that a logic of the sciences is exclusively a logic of justification. Against this view it is argued that the processes of creativity and discovery are fit subjects for philosophical investigation and that any serious account of creativity must transcend the traditional distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The restoration of the logic of discovery is developed with reference to the 'fields of discovery' which include C.S. Peirce, Norwood R. Hanson and recent work in artificial intelligence, together with numerous historical case studies, from the Piltdown fraud to discoveries about outer planets. In opposition to this much of conventional wisdom concerning creative science it its argued that the entire process of discovery is amenable to rational assessment and possible simulation.Lamb, David is the author of 'Discovery, Creativity, and Problem-Solving' with ISBN 9781856280433 and ISBN 1856280438.