To investigate the nature of creative thinking in biomedical science with specific applications to molecular pathologies and DNA technologies.
Accounts of breakthroughs and inventions contained in autobiographies, biographies, interviews, and archival sources.
Discoveries that have altered, or may yet alter, basic textbook accounts of biomedical sciences for which appropriate data sources exist.
Approximately 1000 data sources were analyzed, both within appropriate sciences and in other creative fields, such as the arts.
The current analysis is based on a framework described in our previous book, Sparks of Genius, which outlines a general approach to understanding creative thinking.
Creative thinking in all disciplines depends on a common mental "toolkit" that consists of 13 fundamental tools: observing, imaging, abstracting, pattern recognition, pattern forming, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing. Scientists recognize and solve problems by observing data that break the patterns established by theories; exploring a system by creating an abstract model with which they can play; and transforming data into feelings, sounds, and other forms that create surprising analogies to already-understood principles. The result of such personal thinking is knowledge combined with sensation and emotion--feeling and understanding synthesized into complete awareness. We illustrate some of these modes of thinking with reference to recent breakthroughs in DNA-related areas and suggest ways in which the use of "tools for thinking" can increase the probability of making further discoveries in the biomedical sciences.