Studies of scientific discovery: Complementary approaches and convergent findings

This review integrates 4 major approaches to the study of science-historica l accounts of scientific discoveries, psychological experiments with nonsci entists working on tasks related to scientific discoveries, direct observat ion of ongoing scientific laboratories, and computational modeling of scien tific discovery processes-by viewing them through the lens of the theory of human problem solving. The authors provide a brief justification for the s tudy of scientific discovery, a summary of the major approaches, and criter ia for comparing and contrasting them. Then, they apply these criteria to t he different approaches and indicate their complementarities. Finally, they provide several examples of convergent principles of the process of scient ific discovery.