Identifying Multiple Levels of Heuristic Reasoning Used in Scientific Model Construction: A Framework Grounded in Imagistic Processing

This chapter first consolidates a set of important heuristic strategies used for constructinginnovative scientific models from three books, including studies in the history of genetics andelectromagnetism, and an expert think-aloud study in mechanics. Twenty-four strategies are identified,most of which are field-general. Patterns in their use suggest a partially organized hierarchy ofinterconnected strategies and substrategies, contrary to the view that heuristics are simply tried in randomorder. Strategies at four different size and time scale levels are described, including larger Modeling CyclePhases of model generation, evaluation, and modification, each of which can utilize many smaller TacticalHeuristics as substrategies, e.g., analogy, or testing predictions from the model. These in turn can utilizeGrounded Imagistic Processes, such as imagistic mental simulation, an important alternative to deductionfor evaluating a model by running it. The framework links higher level, serially organized processes withlower level, imagery-based processes. Its intermediate degree of organization is neither anarchistic, norfully algorithmic. Possible benefits of organization are narrowing the search space involved and balancingsources of model construction and criticism for productive creativity. Unorganized, spontaneous processesare also discussed, along with their possible benefits.