LRB on AS

[Mathew Forstater]

that dreams, chance, accidents, hunches, intuition, gut feelings, imagination,
creativity, etc have all played an important part in hypothesis formulation and
scientific discovery is well documented.  it may not make it into the final
versions of the journal articles, but it is there in scientists' personal
journals, in diaries, memoirs, interviews, etc.  people who have emphasized
this, like the mathematician Georges Polya and the physical chemist Michael
Polanyi also argue that awareness of the contribution of  these facteors
actually increases their power. (C. Wright Mills on the sociological
imagination, C.S. Peirce and Norwood Hanson on retroduction and abduction are
also useful here.  also Einstein on the free creation of the mind.  [i have a
paper that argues this is also relevant for constructing an alternatative
approach to 'rational' or 'optimal'  planning]).

 by the way, economists are generally much worse on all this than physicists and
mathematicians; economists' "physics envy" (mirowski) and their insecurity about
the 'scientific' soundness of their discipline leads to greater defensiveness on
these matters, and a great reluctance to acknowledge the value of stuff that
sounds too 'mushy.'

mat

bautiste at uswest.net wrote:


> I wonder what Sokal et al. would have to say to the fact that Max Planck is
> said to have conceived of his theorem while reading Kierkegaard on the Leap
> of Faith, according to Max Jammer, the historian of science?
>
> For that matter, Arthur Koestler notes several instances of great scientists
> developing theories after dreams. On a slightly different note, how account
> for Kepler's discoveries? He believed in and lived by astrology, according
> to most accounts.
>
> chuck miller