ABSTRACT
Emotions are an important aspect of scientific work, yet they are still largely neglected in the research on science. Their role in shaping scientific observation and discovery as well as the justification, revision and rejection of old convictions and new conjectures has nevertheless received some attention in sociology, philosophical epistemology, and philosophy of science, beginning from the early writings of Ludwik Fleck (1935, 1936). 1 He argued that collective emotions and moods are important in scientific activity conducted by “thought collectives” with distinct “thought styles” – shared cognitive frameworks characterized by common research problems, evaluative standards, methods, techniques, and literary styles. Fleck, who believed that “there is no emotionless state or pure rationality as such” (Fleck 1935, 49), suggested that “thought styles” evoke and maintain a collective mood that “produces the readiness for an identically directed perception, evaluation, and use of what is perceived” (Fleck 1936, 101). Recent research supports the view that emotions indeed have these roles in scientific perception and evaluation. Thus, Jack Barbalet (2011) suggests that scientific aesthetics, learned during training in a specific research community, guides scientific perception and gives rise to aesthetic pleasure when a particular research episode corresponds with the emotionally laden values of the research community. Several philosophers have also highlighted the functions of emotions as detectors of salience and in epistemic justification (Elgin 2008; Hookway 2008; Tanesini 2008; de Sousa 1987). Scientists’ own descriptions of the research process confirm these roles of emotions in science (e.g. Koppman et al. 2015).
