In Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist, Dean Simonton examines the nature and dynamics of creativity in science. To a large degree, creativity is the fuel of scientific change. Consequently, developing an adequate understanding of scientific creativity is indispensable for a comprehensive understanding of science.
Simonton examines four research programs focusing on the study of scientific creativity. One research program focuses on uncovering the logic of scientific discovery. This program has attracted the attention of cognitive scientists and philosophers. As Simonton notes, a number of computer programs have been developed to model the dynamics of scientific discovery in an effort to aid us in better understanding the process. One program has even managed to ‘discover’ Kepler's laws of planetary motion. A second research program is aimed at understanding the nature of scientific genius, a quality that all great scientists are alleged to possess. Advocates of this research program seek to discover the key differences between great scientists and typical people. This research program has been popular with psychologists. A third research program, the ‘Zeitgeist account’, suggests that at some point in history, particular scientific discoveries are more or less inevitable. Advocates of this sort of account are cultural determinists. In support of their view, they cite the fact that some discoveries have been independently made by more than one scientist. This sort of account is popular among sociologists. Finally, a fourth research program emphasizes the role of chance in developments in science. Advocates of the chance account emphasize the role that serendipity has played in many significant scientific discovers. For example, Röntgen's discovery of x-rays and Fleming's discovery of penicillin were serendipitous discoveries.
These four research programs have often been presented as competing accounts. Simonton, though, aims to develop and defend an integrated account, an account that acknowledges a role for all four factors: logic, genius, Zeitgeist, and chance. But, Simonton ultimately privileges the chance account. He believes that chance explains more than the alternatives.
In examining the variety of ways in which chance affects science, Simonton draws attention to similarities between the dynamics of scientific change and the dynamics of evolutionary change. Comparing scientific change to evolutionary change is not new. Both Popper and Kuhn made such comparisons. David Hull's Science as a Process provides the most thorough account of scientific change modeled on biological change.
Simonton's book compliments Hull's work. Simonton emphasizes a variety of ways in which chance contributes to scientific success. For example, Simonton discusses the ‘equal-odds’ rule. As Simonton explains, “the ratio of high-impact publications to total output—the hit rate—is uncorrelated with total output” (22). Each paper a scientist produces has an equal (but very low) chance of becoming a highly cited paper. Past successes do not affect future chances. Even after a scientist has published a number of high impact articles, each of her subsequent publications has an equal (but low) chance of becoming a highly cited article. This is one reason why Simonton is led to reject the genius account of scientific creativity. If great scientists were distinguishable from others by some sort of quality, call it scientific genius, we would expect that each of their publications would be inclined to have a high impact. The data, though, does not support the genius hypothesis.
Simonton also cites the unreliability of the peer-review process as supporting the chance account. A number of studies suggest that there is very little between-reviewer reliability. Specifically, studies suggest that there is very little agreement between referees about (1) the importance of contributions, (2) the quality of the design and analysis, and (3) the style and organization of the manuscripts they review (see Simonton 2004, 85–86). Consequently, it is not surprising that referees also disagree about whether a particular manuscript deserves to be published. In fact, Simonton notes that “so poor is the consensus among referees that their recommendations to accept a paper agree only about one-fifth of the time” (86). Hence, both authors and reviewers seem to have little sense of where their field is going. Rather, the direction a field goes seems to be determined by a selection process that feeds off of the variations produced by those working in the field. And what variations are produced is, to a large degree, determined by chance.
Simonton's book is engaging and informative, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of scientific change. There is a risk that Creativity in Science will not get the attention it deserves from philosophers of science, for Simonton is not a philosopher of science. He is a psychologist by training, and he has done a lot of work in historiometrics, a subfield of history concerned with the use of quantitative methods. In this area he is very accomplished. In fact, Simonton has published numerous books and over 200 scholarly articles.
I strongly recommend Creativity in Science to philosophers of science for two reasons. First, the book is about scientific discovery, and this is a topic that has been largely and unfortunately neglected by philosophers of science. Long ago, philosophers cared about scientific discovery. For example, Francis Bacon's method is principally a method of discovery. But throughout the 20th century, mainstream philosophers of science have generally neglected the context of discovery, preferring instead to focus narrowly on the context of justification. The rationale was that philosophers could legitimately say something about justification because justification concerns the logical relations between statements, and this is one of the areas of expertise of philosophers. More recently, this demarcation between the context of justification and the context of discovery has been called into question. Further, as philosophers have developed a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of science, we have come to realize that logic alone is not sufficient for developing an adequate account of the dynamics of scientific change. Consequently, the context of discovery deserves the attention of philosophers.
The second reason philosophers should attend to Simonton's book is that it provides a valuable synthesis of empirical studies on science, scientific reasoning, and creativity, and thus enables us to effectively pursue our goal of developing a naturalistic epistemology of scientific knowledge and inquiry. Many philosophers of science profess an interest and commitment to naturalizing philosophy of science, but few have actually embarked on the difficult empirical work. David Hull has written a number of articles, conveniently collected together in Science and Selection, pleading with philosophers to test the claims they make about science. As Hull explains, if we took seriously this call to naturalize philosophy of science, philosophers would make modest claims about science, but claims that could be tested. This in turn would enable us to develop and deepen our understanding of science. Simonton's book provides us with a vast store of data and studies from which to build a better understanding of science and scientific change.
