Introduction: A “Hidden World” of Nonformal Expert Reasoning

This book attempts to examine sources of creative theory formation in scientists. This interest leads to an investigation of the domain of nonformal reasoning in science, including analogical reasoning, mental model construction, imagistic simulation, applying physical intuition, and advanced techniques such as using Gedanken (thought) experiments. Some historians and philosophers of science believe that these nonformal, creative reasoning processes play a crucial role in original discoveries in science even though those processes can be well hidden from sight in published scientific articles and presentations. However, others are quite skeptical that such nonformal methods can play a role in scientific thinking. The book documents these methods actually being used, through the analysis of video tapes of scientists thinking aloud while attempting to solve problems and understand unfamiliar systems.

Transcripts from these tapes capture scientists in the act of generating creative analogies, extreme cases, mental models, and thought experiments, as well as mentally performing imaginative spatial transformations such as deforming, cutting, and reassembling objects in novel ways. They also allow the analysis of insight episodes where a subject makes a conceptual breakthrough accompanied by “Aha“-type exclamations. A major goal of this book is to better understand this “hidden world” of expert nonformal reasoning by describing subprocesses occurring in each of the above methods.