On Scientific Discovery

The 1977 lectures of the International School for the History of Science at Erice in Sicily were devoted to that vexing but inexorable problem, the nature of scientific discovery. With all that has been written, by scientists themselves, by historians and philosophers and social theorists, by psycholo gists and psychiatrists, by logicians and novelists, the problem remains elusive. Happily we are able to bring the penetrating lectures from Erice that summer to a wider audience in this volume of theoretical investigations and detailed case studies. The ancient and lovely town of Erice in Northwest Sicily, 750 m above the sea, was famous throughout the Mediterranean for its temple of the goddess of nature, Venus Erycina, said to have been built by Daedalus. As philosophers and historians of the natural sciences, we hope that the stimulating atmo sphere of Erice will to some extent be transmitted by these pages. We are especially grateful to that generous and humane physician and historian of science, Dr. Vincenzo Cappelletti, himself a creative scientist, for his collaboration in bringing this work to completion. We admire his intelligent devotion to fostering creative interaction between scientists and historians of science as Director of the School of History of Science within the great Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture at Erice, as well as for his imaginative leadership of the Istituto della Encic10pedia Italiana.

Inhalt
I. General Problems.- A Plea for Freeing the History of Scientific Discoveries from Myth.- Progress and Rationality in Research: Science from the Viewpoint of Popperian Methodology.- The Problems of Scientific Validation.- Science and Analogy.- Inductive Method and Scientific Discovery.- Scientific Discovery from the Viewpoint of Evolutionary Epistemology.- The Analytical (Quantitative) Theory of Science and its Implications for the Nature of Scientific Discovery.- Difficulties Inherent in a Pedagogy of Discovery in the Teaching of the Sciences.- Discovery and Vocation.- II. Case Studies.- Two Scientific Discoveries: Their Genesis and Destiny.- Logical and Psychological Aspects of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.- The Discovery of Duodenal Ancylostoma and of its Pathogenic Power.- Weber and Maxwell on the Discovery of the Velocity of Light in Nineteenth Century Electrodynamics.- Cognitive Psychology, Scientific Creativity, and the Case Study Method.- Biographical Notes.- Name Index.