creativity psychology and the history of science

[...]... The free use of “I” and “we” reflects this state of affairs The collection has two main aims: First, we seek to bring out the mutually enriching relations between the history of science and the psychological study of thinking and thus try to foster and demonstrate the possibility of a synthesis of psychology and the study of the sciences—our research on creativity can be understood as an outgrowth of. .. philosophy of science as fields of theoretical inspiration, scientific change has become a widespread model for the description of ontogenetic development in psychology and quite a fashionable one too The theory that goes the farthest in its theoretical borrowing from the history of science is the “theory theory” as propounded by Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997) The central tenet of this theory is “that the processes... integrate the two disciplines of psychology and the history of science The goal of such an endeavor would be to link the reconstruction of the scientist’s intellectual work to some general assumptions about the development of thinking in its historical contexts Unfortunately, neither the established methods of theory construction and hypothesis testing as they are practised and vehemently advocated in psychology, ... developmental psychology has to contribute to our understanding of the course of scientific development, the historical growth of knowledge, and theoretical change HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN RECENT PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES Gruber’s and Piaget’s endeavors to bridge developmental psychology and the history of science no longer stand alone Now that developmental psychologists have discovered history. .. coherent, and can fulfill explanatory and predictive purposes The theory theorists assimilate the development of children’s cognitive structures to theory dynamics For the case of theory dynamics in science, Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997) propose an account of theory change that is supposed to provide a condensed version of the relevant philosophical literature: Proponents of the old theory first deny the empirical... blinds them to the facts Sticking to the central ideas of their intuitive theories, the children—at least for a certain time— resist counter-evidence Most of the “theory” accounts of cognitive development work with an idea of “scientific theory” which should represent something like the least common denominator of the widely differing “theory” conceptions to be found in philosophy and history of science. .. elements And makes them move in one society —William Wordsworth, The Prelude A LIFE WITH A PURPOSE The process of science entails a paradox On the one hand, the scientist must develop and nurture a point of view that facilitates and encourages the discovery of novelty On the other hand, this point of view, while assimilating the new, must also be stable enough to preserve its own direction and continuity... Following the borderlines of academia, they would fall within the range of developmental psychology Moreover, if psychology took the challenge of situating the growth of ideas or thoughts culturally and historically, Gruber’s work would form part of its disciplinary core In the following some of the fundamental lines of Gruber’s approach will be presented by situating it within the field of creativity. .. host of insights both expressing and guiding the sweep of the work 26 INTRODUCTION ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK The present book is a collection of my papers ranging over a period of some forty years, from 1959 to 1999 Although I am the main author of the papers in this book throughout most of the decades represented here, I have benefited profoundly from the collaboration of a shifting group of students and. .. picture of a web of belief, on the other hand, provides at most a framework for an empirical study of knowledge and its change, but is far from settling the question of how scientists, ordinary people, or children conceive the world and how changes in these conceptions occur Hence, neither the “standard view” of theories nor Quine’s work on the relation between semantics and knowledge were aimed at the . Creativity, Psychology and the History of Science BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editors ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University JÜRGEN RENN, Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science KOSTAS. contributions to the understanding of creativity are path-breaking because they distinguish themselves from these one-sided approaches. They stand out with their profound understanding of both the historical. about the nature of creative activity. The purported trade-off between concentration on the individual creator on the one hand, and generalizations on the other is deceiving. First of all, there