Abstract
Scientists imagine constantly. They do this when generating research problems, designing experiments, interpreting data, troubleshooting, drafting papers and presentations, and giving feedback. But when and how do scientists learn how to use imagination? Across 6 years of ethnographic research, it has been found that advanced career scientists feel comfortable using and discussing imagination, while graduate and undergraduate students of science often do not. In addition, members of marginalized and vulnerable groups tend to express negative views about the strength of their imaginations and the general usefulness of imagination in science. After introducing these findings and discussing the typical relationship between a scientist and their imagination across a career, we argue that reducing the number or power of active imaginations in science is epistemically counterproductive. We suggest several ways to bring imagination back into science in a more inclusive way, especially through courses on imagination for scientists, good role models, and exemplar-based learning.
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Notes
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- 2.
There are also negative ethical effects, e.g., by introducing unnecessary suffering into the life of scientists. While no less important, we will focus on the negative epistemic effects.
- 3.
We thank Elisabeth Hildt for prompting us to think more about curiosity, especially in light of the discussion in Sect. 3.1. There is precious little work in philosophy of science on curiosity (Inan 2017; Inan et al. 2018; Papastephanou 2019; Miščević 2020). The way we see the connection between creativity, imagination, and curiosity is as follows. Taking up a virtue-theoretic stance, creativity can be understood as the disposition to use (and be motivated to use) imagination to generate new and valuable ideas and to see those ideas through (this is inspired by, but distinct from, the account presented in Hills and Bird 2019). That motivation to find new ideas and see them through is the effect of curiosity, which might be portrayed as a desire for understanding (Miščević 2020).
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Stuart, M.T., Sargeant, H. (2024). Inclusivity in the Education of Scientific Imagination. In: Hildt, E., Laas, K., Brey, E.M., Miller, C.Z. (eds) Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51560-6_15
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