Technoscientific Research, 2nd Edition

8 Context of discovery

The title of this chapter and the title of the next chapter refer directly to a fundamental distinction, attributed to Hans Reichenbach¹, emphasising qualitative difference between two stages of scientific work, viz. generation of hypotheses (in the context of discovery) and their transformation into theories or other pieces of scientific knowledge (in the context of justification). According to some interpretations, the context of discovery, unlike the context of justification, should be a subject of study belonging to psychology and sociology rather than to philosophy of science because the act of conceiving a new idea is not necessarily a rational process, and therefore cannot be regulated². Alternative interpretations, ...