Title: Scientific creativity and imagination (from the perspective of a few mid-20th-century theoretical physicists)
Abstract:
Contemporary work in the philosophy of scientific creativity and imagination has developed with little connection to the reflections of practising scientists (excluding cognitive scientists, etc.). There is typically some mention of the writings of Poincaré, Polanyi, and, as always, Einstein, but little to no attention has been given to the thought of quantum theorists. This is surprising, given the vast importance of the topic in the thought of leading figures such as Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, and David Bohm (amongst many others). It is an interesting fact that these theorists, who struggled to agree about anything concerning the interpretation of quantum theory (here I am contrasting Pauli and Heisenberg with Bohm), defended nearly the same account of creativity in scientific practice. These physicists' writings on scientific creativity focused on the intuition of structural harmonies, through a faculty of genuine insight or creative genius, in the development of something akin to a scientific aesthetics. This thought can be traced back to Poincaré, but it has its true origins in the German romantic and idealist traditions. This work stands in stark contrast to the positions defended in the philosophical literature today. In this talk, I will argue that this disparity is rooted not only in a difference in philosophical context but in a divergent understanding of the nature of the ‘reality’ underlying contemporary scientific inquiry.