Scientific discovery has been the subject of many philosophical and historical studies. It has also provided a rich arena for debates on the nature of scientific inquiry. One approach argues that the process of discovering something is an extended, reasoned activity that includes observation and experimentation, articulating and developing ideas, and the act of devising a novel insight. This characterization of the process has motivated research on cognitive science, psycho-education, and artificial intelligence.
Other approaches to scientific discovery, influenced by the work of William Whewell, argue that the process of discovering something is an unanalyzable, intuitive act, that no manual can provide a step-by-step procedure for innovative concepts or hypotheses to emerge. This view has fueled philosophical debates about the possibility of a philosophy of discovery and motivated research on computational heuristics.
In the 19th century, Claude Bernard, Auguste Comte, George Gore, John Herschel, and W Stanley Jevons offered rich accounts of knowledge generation and proper scientific reasoning that included such topics as the role of senses in knowledge generation, experimentation, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, and hypothesis formation. These theories were criticized by other philosophers, most famously by Charles Sanders Peirce and Thomas Kuhn.
Kuhn argued that it is often impossible to identify the precise moment of a discovery. He used the example of Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen to show that a new discovery can be a result of binding together, or “colligating”, already known facts and showing them in a new light. For example, the fact that burning some substances yields gas can be derived from other facts, including the atomic principle of combustion and the caloric theory of heat.