Thinking Creatively about Creativity: What can We Learn from Recent Developments in the Philosophy of Science?

Some time ago the Hungarian scholar Istvan Magyari-Beck (1994) published a challenging article in this journal indicating weaknesses in creativity research which sparked off responses from the American scholars Teresa Amabile (1994) and Scott Isaksen (1995). While Magyari-Beck applied familiar themes from the history of science, this article borrows extensively from the latest thinking in the philosophy of science, thus continuing the debate started by Magyari-Beck at the ontological and epistemological plane. The contribution of this article lies in the fact that it uncovers some basic assumptions researchers hold about the nature of the (social) world and ways they can obtain knowledge about that world. As such it challenges orthodox ideas about “good” research and theory building.