Covariance/invariance: a cognitive heuristic in Einstein’s Relativity Theory formation

Relativity Theory by Albert Einstein has been so far little considered by cognitive scientists, notwithstanding its undisputed scientific and philosophical moment. Unfortunately, we don't have a diary or notebook as cognitively useful as Faraday's. But physics historians and philosophers have done a great job that is relevant both for the study of the scientist's reasoning and the philosophy of science. I will try here to highlight the fertility of a 'triangulation' using cognitive psychology, history of science and philosophy of science in starting answering a clearly very complex question: why did Einstein discover Relativity Theory? Here we are not much concerned with the unending question of precisely what Einstein discovered, that still remains unanswered, for we have no consensus over the exact nature of the theory's foundations (Norton 1993). We are mainly interested in starting to answer the 'how question', and especially the following sub-question: what (presumably) were his goals and strategies in his search? I will base my argument on fundamental publications of Einstein, aiming at pointing out a theory-specific heuristic, setting both a goal and a strategy: covariance/invariance. The result has significance in theory formation in science, especially in concept and model building. It also raises other questions that go beyond the aim of this paper: why was he so confident in such heuristic? Why didn't many other scientists use it? Where did he keep such a heuristic? Do we have any other examples of similar heuristic search in other scientific problem solving? © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.