Concluding Remarks and Suggestions for Further Research

Abstract

IF ONLY THE ANALYSES in this book could provide definitive replies to the problems that I posed in the Introduction! The case studies analyzed here suggest that there is good reason to agree with Poincaré and Einstein, among others, that this shall not come to pass. But, like them, we are not deterred from exploring a phenomenon through which “we may hope to arrive at what is most essential in the human mind” (Poincaré, 1908b; see epigraph above). The methods of analysis in this book offer a step toward that goal because they indicate that when the problem of the “mystery” of creative thinking is properly defined, it can shed light on several other problems hitherto unrelated: the process of thinking itself, the changing views of physical reality required by progress in science, and the process by which theories supplant one another. It is mainly to these associations that I address the concluding remarks.