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Introduction: Scientific Discovery and Inference Emiliano Ippoliti1 · Tom Nickles2

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Scientific discovery considered broadly as the way new scientific knowledge is generated, or still more broadly as scientific innovation (whether or not a question of true knowledge) has been conceptualized basically in two fashions. The first one, which we label the non-inferential, goes back at least to the notion of Ancient Greek Muses. The main contention of the non-inferential view is that there is no rational way to account for the way knowledge advances, e.g., by first formulating new hypotheses. A familiar example is Karl Popper, who explicitly states that “there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas, or a logical reconstruction of this process” (Popper 1961, p. 32). Many proponents of this view are content to say that discovery is the outcome of ‘special processes’ that are totally opaque; hence, there is no logical path whatsoever to discovering something new. Notable examples of the non-inferential way are the black box approach (see e.g. Einstein 1958; Popper 1961) and the psychologistic approach (Poincaré 1908). They employ such notions as (Romantic) genius, insight, and intuition to account for discovery. Unfortunately, most of the time, this approach ends up in an obscurum per obscurius, since the concept introduced to explain a seemingly opaque process (discovery, innovation) turns out to be even more opaque. The second approach, which we label inferential, goes back at least to Plato and Aristotle. It maintains that there is a rational way, or at least a cognitively or rationally intelligible way, to account for the way knowledge advances via new ideas and practices. In its “strong” version, it argues that there is a method (or methods) for discovery, which can be refined, learnt and transmitted. This view can be broken down into at least three approaches: the cognitive approach * Emiliano Ippoliti [email protected] Tom Nickles [email protected] 1



Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy



University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, USA

2

(Simon 1977, 1987; Weisberg 2006), the deductive approach (Musgrave 1988, 1989; Zahar 1983), and the heuristic approach (Lakatos 1976; Urbach 1978; Zahar 1983; Nickles 1987, 2006; Cellucci 2013, 2017; Ippoliti 2014, Ippoliti 2017a, b). It is worth noting here that these approaches do not share the same idea of “inference”, or better, they disagree on the kind of inference that can be regarded as a legitimate way of advancing scientific knowledge. The deductive approach contends that deductive reasoning is the rational way of producing and reconstructing new knowledge. Proponents of other inferential lines reply that this cannot be the case, for the conclusion of a deductive inference, strictu sensu, does not generate new information with respect to its premises. On the other hand, deductive arguments themselves have to be discovered. They do not drop out of the sky for free, else much mathematics (and much other reasoning) would be t