The Collossal Pile of Jibberish Behind Discovery.

[Kai]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/11/14/the-colossal-pile-of-jibberish-behind-discovery-and-its-implications-for-science-funding/#.Uhun2D9AQn6

You see, there is no uniformly sound advice on where to get good ideas. There's no recipe for discovery. In fact, this informal claim can be made rigorous in several mathematico-computational senses and proven, something I studied earlier in my career. Furthermore, the discovery process doesn't always give you an indication of how close you might be to the end, nor if there will be an end at all. In fact, in my work I've been able to prove that for some discoveries it is intrinsically impossible to know how close one is to reaching the end. For these puzzles, sudden breakthroughs—aha moments—are in fact logically required rather than due to some quirk of human psychology.

The result is that how we scientists find our ideas is ugly, and frankly embarrassing to show folks. That's why we don't put this part of the process into our journal articles or books.

It includes a slideshow of 1.5 years of his idea notebooks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

LOVE.