Abstract
It is unusual for an author, less than one-tenth of the way through his work, to disclaim the existence of the subject matter that the title of his treatise announces. Yet that is exactly what Karl Popper does in his classic, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, [4], announcing in no uncertain terms on p. 31 that scientific discovery has no logic. The disclaimer is so remarkable that it deserves to be quoted at length:
I said above that the work of the scientist consists in putting forward and testing theories.
[Philosophy of Science 40, 471–480 (1973)].
This research has been supported by a Public Health Service Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which is monitored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. I am indebted to Nicholas Rescher for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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References
Buchanan, B. G., Logics of Scientific Discovery, A. I. Memo 47 (Computer Science Department, Stanford University, 1966).
Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
Nilsson, N. J., Problem-Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971).
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© 1977 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Simon, H.A. (1977). Does Scientific Discovery Have a Logic?. In: Models of Discovery. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9521-1_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9521-1_18
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