Another scientist, William Whewell, offered an additional perspective. Induction, the patient gathering of data and the teasing out of causal factors, was clearly important to scientific research. However, the big breakthroughs, Whewell argued, required the more powerful force of the imagination. It was these inspired intuitive leaps, akin to those of a great painter or writer, that allowed “a genius of a Discoverer” like Galileo or Newton to suddenly sort our ordinary perceptions of things into an extraordinary and meaningful pattern—including our perception of living nature.
