During the early 20th century, many philosophers of science tended to treat scientific discovery as a non-analyzable creative act of a gifted genius. Alternative conceptions of discovery, especially in the pragmatist tradition, stressed that scientific discovery is an extended process including the reasoning processes through which a new insight is articulated and further developed. Philosophers were divided over whether or not this articulation and development process constitutes a part of discovery proper – and, if so, whether it is governed by rules that are amenable to philosophical analysis.
Some of these alternatives, for example the logics of discovery proposed by Norwood Hanson, argued that episodes of successful scientific inquiry follow distinctive logical patterns that are not in any way identical to the inductive or deductive logic used to justify new scientific hypotheses. These logics of discovery, influenced by C. S. Peirce, are designed to provide a schematic representation of the mental operations that go into scientific knowledge generation.
Others, such as the theory-induced discoveries of Claude Bernard, Ludwig Boltzmann, and John Hopkinson, argue that scientific discovery occurs in pre-paradigmatic periods or times of paradigm crisis when scientists develop tentative theories that lead to novel expectations about new phenomena. They then carry out experiments and observations to determine whether or not these new expectations can be borne out.
In more recent years, however, philosophers have shifted from the non-inferential treatment of scientific discovery to a more inferential approach that makes use of resources drawn from empirical studies of actual scientific discoveries in the past and present. In particular, works in cognitive science, neuroscience, computational research and environmental and social psychology have been incorporated into discussions about the structure of scientific creativity and about the conditions under which it can be stimulated and supported by the scientific community.