Creative Model Construction in Scientists and Students

The Role of Imagery, Analogy, and Mental Simulation

How do scientists use analogies and other processes to break away from old theories and generate new ones? This book documents such methods through the analysis of video tapes of scientifically trained experts thinking aloud while working on unfamiliar problems. Some aspects of creative scientific thinking are difficult to explain, such as the power of analogies, and the enigmatic ability to learn from thought experiments. This book is a window on that world.

In the torsion insight, the discovery of the new variable of torsion interrupted the
evaluation process that was occurring and sent the investigator suddenly back to
the generation/ discovery process. This challenges the distinction between the
context of discovery and context of evaluation in science when one is examining
thinking at this level of detail. However, the distinction may still be useful in
describing an effective planning strategy, as in Fig. 16.4, where there are
separate steps ...