Scientific Thinking
Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17First version:
How do scientists actually think? I mean, when they are doing science, as opposed to going about daily life like anyone else, or for that matter scheming to get their grant proposals funded. (Do they go about daily life like everyone else? If not, is it because scientific thinking spreads into other domains, or because they start out weird, or what?) How do they come to think that way? How closely does scientific thinking conform to what theories of scientific method says it should be, and do the discrepancies matter?
See also: Analogy and Metaphor; Cognitive Science; Collective Cognition; Imagination and Creativity; Machine Learning, Statistical Inference and Induction; Sociology of Science; Thought and Society
- Recommended:
- K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Romer, "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance", Psychological Review 100 (1993): 363--406
- Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms [How and when to change the kind of representation you're using. Precis by Prof. Boden.]
- Ronald N. Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach
- John H. Holland, Keith J. Holyoak, Richard E. Nisbett, and Paul R. Thagard, Induction: Process of Inference, Learning and Discovery [Review: The Best-Laid Schemes o' Mice an' Men]
- Peter Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought [collected in Pluto's Republic]
- To read:
- Scott Atran, Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science
- Scott Atran and Douglas Medin, The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature
- William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson, Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research
- Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich and Michael Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science
- Aidan Feeney and Evan Heit (eds.), Inductive Reasoning: Cognitive, Mathematical, and Neuroscientific Approaches
- Gregory J. Feist, The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind
- Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Creativity in the Mathematical Field [Review by Jacques Barzun]
- David Klahr (with Kevin Dunbar, Anne L. Fay, David Penner and Christian D. Schunn), Exploring Science: The Cognition and Development of Discovery Processes
- Barbara Koslowski, Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning
- Craig Loehle, Becoming a Successful Scientist: Strategic Thinking for Scientific Discovery
- Robert N. McCauley, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not
- Nancy Nersessian, Creating Scientific Concepts
- Lisa M. Osbeck, Nancy J. Nersessian, Kareen R. Malone, and Wendy C. Newstetter, Science as Psychology: Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice [review by Ronald Giere makes it sound more useful as source material than for insights]
- Fenna H. Poletiek, Hypothesis Testing Behaviour [Review by Denny Borsboom]
- Frederick Reif, Applying Cognitive Science to Education: Thinking and Learning in Scientific and Other Complex Domains
- Robert Scott Root-Bernstein, Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge
- H. A. Simon, P. Langley, G. L. Bradshaw and J. Zytkow, Scientific Discovery: Computational Explorations of the Creative Process
- Deena Skolnick Weisberg, David M. Sobel, Constructing Science: Connecting Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking in Young Children
