Scientific paper writing : artficiality vs creativity?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by lightgigantic, Feb 6, 2009.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    Another quote from Wilkins in an interview


    Often scientific papers are written in a rational, logical way, leading from the premises to the final result, but that is not at all the way discoveries are made. Discoveries come as intuitive flashes. In other words, when writing scientific papers, you usually know the answer, so you spend the next several years working it out, proving it. But then you write the paper as if it had been discovered the other way around.

    Prof. Wilkins: I quite agree. It is an important point. On the other hand, though, a scientific paper is deliberately written in this artificial manner so you can most effectively communicate results to other scientists. Scientific papers are never intended to describe how the work was really done. They simply present the results to other scientists so they can understand what was finally achieved. That is a sensible policy for working scientists.

    But that gives a very contradictory picture.

    Prof. Wilkins: I agree. The logical and rational is a very important element in science. But emphasis on that tends to make people not notice the essential role of intuition. In fact, in any creative activity you can never analyze the whole process completely because psychological and other dimensions are involved. One cannot hope to understand completely the nature of the creative process.


    Is intuition essential and does it render the picture painted by scientific writing somewhat artificial?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. synthesizer-patel Sweep the leg Johnny! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,267
    to answer your first question - not necesarily - a lot of scientists will begin work based on a 'hunch' - intuition if you prefer - of what the end result will be, but those hunches are often based on some sort of evidence, so they are perhaps better described as educated guesses.
    But it seems that some people are better at using a bit of lateral thinking and imagination - or intuition if you prefer - to make the guesses that turned out to be really insightful, interesting and important.

    Does it render the picture painted by scientific writing somewhat artificial? Perhaps on a paper by paper basis yes - but if you look at the wider picture of scientific enquiry over a period of time it reveals itself as a fairly logical , systematic and indeed elegant way of fitting together single peices of evidence into robust ways of understanding and predicting the natural physical world/universe.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    The point is that the the very nature of writing a paper about "how something was discovered" can be determined as artificial since it is not "really" how something was discovered.

    To quote wilkins

    Scientific papers are never intended to describe how the work was really done. They simply present the results to other scientists so they can understand what was finally achieved. That is a sensible policy for working scientists.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. CharonZ Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    786
    Well, papers are rarely about how something was discovered, but rather what was discovered.
    Writing a paper in the form of "we first did this, but it didn't work out, then we tried that and neither did that. Then while I took a shower I suddenly had the idea that it might be such and such, which it wasn't but it provided me with the data that it was indeed this and that"
    is hard to read and hardly concise.

    It might be more interest if the topic of the research was "intuition" itself, though.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page