The aim of my talk is to provide an outlook to a theory of scientific discovery with finding as the key notion. I take finding to entail more than encountering, but less than discovering. I thereby propose a „thick“ notion of finding possessing epistemic weight on its own, and try to figure out what would constitute this epistemic weight. It turns out that imagination, anticipation and what I call „instructive ignorance“ are main constituents of finding. The analysis of finding will pave the way, or so I hope, to a theory of scientific discovery that – contrary to some existing approaches to scientific discovery – would be, on the one hand, comprehensive enough to explain the various phenomena that accompany scientific discoveries in a variety of cases, and, on the other hand, also specific enough in order to account for the substantial difference between discovery and invention. Finally, I illustrate my analysis of finding by the example of Einstein’s early finding of the Equivalence Principle.

Galileo Galilei observed what we now call the planet Neptune in 1612–13, recorded its position, and took it to be a fixed star. Nearly two centuries later, William Herschel observed what we now call the planet Uranus and took it to be a comet. Yet Herschel is credited with discovering a new planet, whereas Galileo is not. Why? Both astronomers saw the relevant object. Both misclassified it. Both documented their observations. What, then, makes the difference? We argue that this puzzle reveals a missing conceptual distinction between encounter, finding, and discovery. An encounter provides perceptual access to an object. A finding occurs when an encountered element is made a subject of further determination within an ongoing inquiry, rather than simply being absorbed into an existing classificatory framework. Discovery, by contrast, is the public stabilization of such a finding. On this account, discovery presupposes finding but is not identical with it. By analyzing the Herschel/Galileo contrast and situating it alongside the later theoretical and observational work that led to the recognized discovery of Neptune, we show how locating finding between perception and discovery clarifies the structure of scientific inquiry and reframes debates in the philosophy of scientific discovery.

I have pointed in past work to the persistent gap in ways of formulating the so-called logic of discovery—rather than attending to the rationality of determining when something is a potential finding, the tendency is to push the gap further to one side or the other, leaving an empty space where that rationality would be. In this talk, I consider two alternative ways of understanding the logic of perceiving potential value. One, effectual reasoning, is drawn from entrepreneurial theory and offers an alternative to assessing the value of a finding as a means to a known end. The other, metis, offers an alternative to techne and episteme as a way to rationally assess the world as it is, complementing the role of the hunt in Bacon's philosophy of science. In sum, this exploratory talk posits that our understanding of the logic of discovery and thus finding is undercut only by the constraints philosophers have put on what counts as rationality, and that these constraints are not warranted. 

In engaging with fiction, I might find myself expecting something to happen next, or feeling annoyance at a character or author, or some other kind of reaction. Or I might identify with a character for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. An astute consumer of a work of fiction does well to keep track in this way of how they react to the events of a narrative. One reason is that in so doing, they are apt to gain something of epistemic value from their engagement with the work. In finding they are annoyed with a character, they might then have an opportunity to ask themselves why this is the case, and thereby come to realize that they see the character in question as somehow representative of a kind of real-life person that they are jealous or resentful of. In this way, finding how we feel, think, or otherwise react to what takes place in a fictional world can help lead us to a measure of self-understanding, alongside any other epistemic value we might derive from the work. There is no crucial dependence here on the case of fiction; we might also learn about ourselves by noting how we find we feel about those objects around us that are “somatically marked” sensu Damasio. But all too often, we are distracted by other priorities when we are engaging with non-fictions. By contrast, when engaging with fictions, we are comparatively detached from the everyday concerns and cares of our lives, and have more head space to attend to how we react to things that take place in the story. Claiming that space is one route to gaining epistemic value in our engagement with fiction.

Scientific discovery is often associated with the image of the solitary genius, yet discoveries typically emerge from distributed processes involving multiple agents and forms of contribution. This talk approaches this tension through a philosophical analysis of finding within a processual model of scientific discovery that distinguishes three stages: finding, acceptance, and integration into knowledge. Focusing on the first stage, I examine the roles agents may play within finding processes and introduce the notion of a finding partner. The aim is to clarify how epistemic contributions are distributed and how partners in finding processes can be identified.

Epistemologists have devised various tools for modelling epistemically assessable conditions of various sorts.  In this talk, I argue that the phenomenon of discovery cannot be modeled using any of these tools.  If we want to understand what it is to discover something, we will need to expand our toolkit.

Finding constitutes a fundamental epistemic act within processes of scientific discovery. The objects of finding can vary considerably. In many, if not most, instances of scientific discovery, finding is preceded by – or embedded within – a necessary phase of collecting. In the natural sciences, this may involve not only material objects but also observations, measurements, data points, and individual cases. Both material entities and immaterial data or observations must be transformed in ways that render them scientifically operable. More generally, collected items can be understood as epistemically functionalized units.
The transition from individual objects and cases to scientific evidence occurs through processes of serialization and repetition. Systematically organized scientific collecting is the technique that generates such seriality and repetition. Only within a series do statistical analysis, type formation, the recognition of regularities, and the identification of deviations become possible. This, in turn, enables inductive reasoning and establishes the conditions for reevaluation and institutionalized openness. Collecting can therefore be described as an epistemological infrastructure of scientific discovery.
The relationship between structured collecting and finding as a component of scientific discovery, however, still requires closer and more detailed examination.