Scientific Imagination: With a New Introduction (Revised)

Using firsthand accounts gleaned from notebooks, interviews, and correspondence of such twentieth-century scientists as Einstein, Fermi, Millikan, Heisenberg, and Oppenheimer, Holton shows how the operation of the scientific imagination has practical implications for the history and philosophy of science, for education, and for the larger understanding of the place of science in our culture. The new introduction, "How a Scientific Discovery is Made: The Case of High-Temperature Superconductivity, " reveals the scientific imagination at work in current science, by disclosing the role of personal motivations that are usually hidden from scientific publications, and the lessons of the case for science policy today.