Read the text to check if your predictions were right. Give the definition of a scientific discovery using the text
Science is divided into innumerable disciplines and sub disciplines, but within any single discipline the progress of science calls for the most diverse activities – activities so numerous and diverse that if would seem that any person could find one to his or her taste. Outsiders often regard science as a sober enterprise, but we who are inside see it as the most romantic of all callings. Both views are right. The romance adheres to the processes of scientific discovery, the sobriety to the responsibility for verification.
Histories of science put the spotlight on discovery. Everyone knows by what accident Fleming discovered penicillin, but only specialists can tell us much about how that discovery was put to the test. Everyone knows of Kekule's dream of the benzene ring, but only chemists can tell us why the structure of that molecule was problematic, and how and when it was finally decided that the problem had been solved. The story of scientific progress reaches its periodic climaxes at the moments of discovery; verification is the essential thing.
In the philosophy of science, all the emphasis is on verification, on how we can tell the true gold of scientific law from the untested fantasy. In fact, it is still the majority view among philosophers of science that only verification is a proper subject of inquiry, that nothing of philosophical interest can be said about the process of discovery. In one respect the philosophers are right. What distinguishes science from the other works of the human imagination is precisely the insistence on testing, on subjecting hypotheses to the most intense scrutiny with the help of empirical evidence. If we are to distinguish science from poetry, we must have a theory of verification or confirmation that tells us exactly how to make that distinction.
But we believe that science is also poetry. The discovery has its reasons, as poetry does. However romantic and heroic we find the moment of discovery, we cannot believe either that the events leading up to that moment are entirely random and chaotic or that they require genius that can be understood only by congenial minds. We believe that finding order in the world must itself be a process impregnated with purpose and reason. We believe that the process of discovery can be described and modeled, and that there are better and worse routes to discovery – more and less efficient paths.
Do we think it is possible to write books of advice to poets? Are we not aware that writing poems (and making scientific discoveries) is a creative process, sometimes even calling for genius? But we can avoid dangerous terms like "genius" by asking more modest questions. We can at least inquire into the sufficient conditions for making a poem (or a discovery). If writing poetry calls for creativity, it also calls for craft. A poet becomes a craftsman (if not a creative poet) by long study and practice. We might aspire to distill and write down what a poet learns in his life. If we did that, we would have a book on the writing of poetry (there are some such on the library shelves). Thus, the question of how poetry is written (or can or should be written) becomes a researchable question, one that can be approached with the standard methods of scientific inquiry. This is no less true of scientific discovery than it is of poetry. Whether there is method in discovery is a question whose answer is open to scientific study. We may fail to find methods that account for discovery, or for the greater success of some would-be discoverers than of others, but we are free to look for them. And if we arrive at some hypotheses about them, then we must test these just as we test any other hypotheses in science.
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SCIENTIST