Sources of scientific innovation: A meta-analytic approach

ABSTRACT—Innovations in science can be divided into at least four major types: radical revolutions (such as Co-pernican and Darwinian theory), technical revolutions (led by scientists such as Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein), controversial innovations (for example, Semmelweis’s theory of puerperal fever), and conservative innovations (eugenics and various vitalistic doctrines). Biographical predictors of support for scientific innovations are dis-tinctly different depending on the type of innovation, as are the predictors of who initially engineers such innova-tions. A meta-analytic approach assessing each new sci-entific theory according to its salient features (including epistemological, ideological, and technical attributes) is required to make sense out of the varied predisposing factors associated with the origins of these innovations. These predisposing factors are not neatly classifiable in terms of Simonton’s (2009, this issue) hierarchical model of domain-specific dispositions, although this model is ap-plicable under some conditions. Instead, the principal sources of scientific achievement are largely a product of person-by-situation interaction effects that are dictated by the nature of the particular innovation. Setting forth generalizations about the sources of scientific achievement is a challenging undertaking, especially if one seeks to test such theories using evidence drawn from the his-torical record. The difficult nature of such a project is exem-plified by the striking diversity of innovations that have punctuated the history of science. As a consequence, what helps to explain one particular scientific innovation is often not useful in explaining others, as historians of science have long pointed out in their critiques of Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientifi