Socio-epistemic Forces of Scientific Creativity

This paper reports on scientific creativity in experimental design in cognitive neuroscience. From an ethnographic approach, we analyze an experimental design in the cognitive neuroscience of perception to describe how standard epistemological criteria for knowledge production take place in concrete scientific spaces and practices. We explain in detail that scientific creativity emerges from a liminal space of epistemic forces that is enabled by heterogeneous social conditions and disciplinary expectations of the scientific community. Finally, by describing this case study we advocate for a more ecological and situated notion of scientific creativity to understand knowledge production processes and practices in the Global South.