Publisher's Synopsis
This special issue is the result of a workshop devoted exclusively to scientific creativity. Substantive themes included metaphors, aesthetics, intuition, visual imagery, and problem solving. Participants chosen for their interdisciplinary focus discuss such methodological issues as the role of historical reconstruction, mental models, thought experiments, and computer simulations of scientific discoveries. The subjects of their papers cover a range of creativity in chemistry, philosophy, physics and psychology. Accordingly, these papers represent the core of a more generalized approach to a puzzle that cuts right to the core of an age old problem indigenous to every pursuit of understanding the world about us:
How is new knowledge created from already existing knowledge and concepts?
