ABSTRACT
That informal reasoning plays a large role in scientific inquiry is a point that is relatively undisputed among scholars and scientists studying science itself. At least since Kuhn's Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970), inquiry into the nature of science has acknowledged that science does not rely exclusively, or even primarily, on formal modes of reasoning. Although the results of science are frequently expressed in the formal language of mathematics and with heavy reliance on inferential logic, few current scholars expect results to originate in formal ways. Recently, there has been a great tendency to ascribe certain very irrational processes to science: Kekulé's dream, for example, or the lucky accidents of Fleming. On this view, science can begin to seem a very arbitrary process indeed (see, e.g., Austin's 1978 book, Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty, the subtitle of which leaves no doubt about its message!)
