 Today, however, there is wide agreement that philosophy and empirical research are not mutually exclusive. Not only do empirical studies of actual scientific discoveries in past and present inform philosophical thought about the structure and cognitive mechanisms of discovery, but works in psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and related fields have become integral parts of philosophical analyses of the processes and conditions of the generation of new knowledge. Social epistemology has opened up another perspective on scientific discovery, reconceptualizing knowledge generation as group process.