Creativity has been one of the most difficult human faculties to investigate systematically. Nearly everyone has a favorite story that illustrates how a creative solution to a difficult problem seemed to emerge from a chaotically organized assortment of clues, all of which seemed to defy systematicity. In the context of science, philosophers have essentially abandoned the unruly problem of creativity. McGuire (Chapter 8) aptly points out, for example, that the problem of verifying (testing) the validity of a scientific hypothesis has received intense philosophical inquiry and is perhaps overemphasized in scientific methods courses. In contrast, the problem of discovering or generating a scientific hypothesis involves creative processes which have generally been outside of the provinces of philosophy and methods courses.

Fortunately, there are some who have attempted to understand creativity in science. Historians, for example, have documented some of the creative processes and accomplishments of famous scientists. Sociologists have identified social, political, and cultural forces that either encourage or discourage creativity. Creativity has been a direct object of inquiry in psychology for at least a century. Consequently, psychologists have identified some of the regularities and mechanisms that underly the creative process. The three chapters in this section (by Simonton, McGuire, and Gruber) represent some of psychology's recent contributions. It would not be surprising if psychology were to take a leadership role in the interdisciplinary metascience arena when it comes to identifying creative processes in science.