Creating Scientific Concepts

by Nancy J. Nersessian

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts , Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. Her investigations of scientific practices show conceptual change as deriving from the use of analogies, imagistic representations, and thought experiments, integrated with experimental investigations and mathematical analyses. She presents a view of constructed models as hybrid objects, serving as intermediaries between targets and analogical sources in bootstrapping processes. Extending these results, she argues that these complex cognitive operations and structures are not mere aids to discovery, but that together they constitute a powerful form of reasoning -- model-based reasoning -- that generates novelty. This new approach to mental modeling and analogy, together with Nersessian's cognitive-historical approach, make Creating Scientific Concepts equally valuable to cognitive science and philosophy of science.

Genres: Philosophy

251 pages, Hardcover

First published August 22, 2008

Reviews

[Joshua Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are large portions of the book that are used to prop up the central claims about the role of representation in scientific discovery that are probably not really necessary; the extended discussion of Maxwell could likely be a lot shorter, but given that the book itself is pretty short and to-the-point, that complaint is a pretty trivial one. All-in-all, this is a very good piece of philosophy.

I'm already sympathetic to most of the views advanced in the book, especially regarding mental representation. I suppose the major concern that I have is that the actual discussion of representation really is the major substance of the book, but it is not the way that the book is sold. Nersessian titled the book (and pitches it in the opening section) as a book about the creation of concepts, and it really isn't. It is really about a way that scientists do conceptual analysis to further their research. That's an interesting project, and one that is engaging and exciting, but not really the same thing.

I do strongly recommend the book to those interested in that sort of thing, though, and the book is accessible and well-written, and should be a relatively quick read for anyone who is conversant in the background psychological literature that Nersessian is working with. The case studies with Maxwell and the unnamed engineer-type-person are informative, and tie in well with a lot of literature (which Nersessian discusses at length in chapters four on until the end) in cognitive science.

[Brandon Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reaction: went by a lot quicker for a murky philosophical, cognitive science, and surprisingly physics-based book
Writing Style: academic attempting to make sense of the cognitive science in context of abstract
Argumentation: model-based reasoning is how science continues to push our lexicon and comprehension of absolutely everything we previously known into a novel schema
Commendation: lots of good citations and didn’t stray too far from the psychological/cognitive science based argumentation expected of the author
Critique: why did physics have to be the thought experiment

[Davie]

recommended by the ICCI blog (Patrick Suppes prize)