Discovery fiction

Discovery fiction is an exposition style in which the content is motivated by a fictitious history of how someone might have discovered the ideas being explained. The idea is mainly used in mathematics.

History

The term was coined by Michael Nielsen. (there are probably alternative terms too that might have come earlier)

Examples

• https://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/normal-subgroups-and-quotient-groups/
• https://michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/
• https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rTC8MgPuYfXEw3WLp/discovery-fiction-for-the-pythagorean-theorem (see also here)
• From Ronald Solomon's Abstract Algebra: "The intention of this text is to emphasize the organic and historical development of the abstract theory of groups, rings, and fields from the substrate of high school mathematics. In Part I the 'history' is fictitious. It is only with imaginative hindsight that we can attribute the concept of a group of motions to Euclid. In the later parts, however, the history is genuine, although the notation and terminology is updated." (p. ix)