Since the origin of the modern sciences, our views on discovery and creativity had a remarkable history. Originally, discovery was seen as an integrating part of methodology and the logic of discovery as algorithmic or nearly algorithmic. During the nineteenth century, conceptions in line with romanticism led to the famous opposition between the context of discovery and the context of justification, culminating in a view that banned discovery from methodology. The revival of the methodological investigation of discovery, which started some twenty years ago, derived its major impetus from historical and sociological studies of the sciences and from developments within cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence. The present methodological attention for discovery and creativity, although a reaction against romantic tenets, is by no means a return to the earlier convictions. On the one hand, the contemporary view is much more realistic. Far from being a priori, it not only considers empirical results as an important source of inspiration and refutation, but also aims at a methodology of which the normative aspects are justifiable in terms of our contemporary knowledge about humans and their environment. On the other hand, modern (especially non-standard) logic provides us with a wide variety of instruments that enable us to articulate complex methodological mechanisms in a precise way. A large majority of philosophers of science and epistemologists agree nowadays that the classical conception as well as the romantic conception are mistaken. Against the classical conception, it is generally accepted that truly novel discoveries are not the result of simply applying some standardized procedure. Against the romantic conception, the idea that discoveries are produced by unstructured flashes of insight is rejected. An especially promising movement ties discovery and creativity to problem solving in the broad sense of the term, and focuses on heuristic rules (guiding innovative research where strong problem solving methods are missing) and on reconstructions (leading to standardized methods that reduce specific problems to routine). Especially this movement, it seems to us, should be credited for the effects of the new concern for discovery. Three major types of results were produced by the contemporary movement. First, there is a host of excellent case studies. Next, there is a variety of more or less powerful (contextual) heuristic rules, usually deriving from reconstructions of historical cases, but seen as useful with respect to future research. Finally, there is a set of (descriptive and normative) models for explaining discoveries and creative processes. Descriptive models mainly aim at explaining the origin of novel products; normative models moreover address the question how rational researchers should proceed when confronted with problems for which a standard procedure is missing. These results mainly induced a change within methodology itself. Conceptions of justification and acceptance, of rationality, and of scientific change, have been transformed or are under transformation. Other effects of the results concern the philosophy of specific sciences, first and foremost mathematics, and also the philosophy of the arts. The motivation for organizing the congress is methodological in the contemporary sense of the term. The central values of such methodology are empirical accurateness, clarity and precision, rationality and normativity. In view of these values, the congress aims at stimulating a goal directed interdisciplinary interaction centring on methodologically relevant themes. Philosophers of science and epistemologists should be challenged and enlightened by historians and sociologists of science, by cognitive scientists, and by logicians. Logicians should confront their systems and approaches with real life applications that relate to important problems. Cognitive scientists should face the normative epistemological aspects of their trade. Historians and sociologists of science should learn about new methodological conceptions and hypotheses, some of which they will falsify and some of which will enrich their approaches. More than any other methodological theme, discovery and creativity are, in the present situation, suitable to provoke this open and enriching confrontation.