Scientific discovery is a major issue of philosophical concern that has triggered a wide variety of debates. Some of these revolve around whether the articulation and development of a novel thought are a part of discovery proper, while others center on whether and how the process of generating new knowledge is guided by rules that can be articulated and elaborated. Those who take a more sociological or psychological approach to this question have also sought to demystify the processes that underlie scientific creativity by drawing resources from such disciplines as cognitive science, neuroscience and computational research.
In the early modern period, rich accounts of actual scientific inquiry were developed that captured knowledge-seeking practices in a variety of fields from astronomy and physics to medicine and agriculture. These were often based on historical investigations, but also employed resources from such disciplines as psychology and cognitive science. They emphasized the importance of systematic observation, experimentation and analysis in developing new knowledge and included concepts like deduction, induction, and hypotheses.
For many philosophers, however, these accounts were too rich and tended to obscure the basic issues at hand. They were also criticized for inadvertently blurring the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification. As the 20th century progressed, attempts to develop more systematically a philosophy of discovery were eclipsed by the advance of the context distinction and subsequent discussions about how the nature of knowledge generation should be conceived. Many philosophers now reject the idea that a philosophy of discovery can be formulated because, in their view, the irrational and intuitive process of generating ideas cannot be examined or explained logically.
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