EvoNarrator: Modeling Scientific Evolution for Feasible Hypothesis Generation

Scientific discovery evolution does not emerge in isolation but stems from the structural deepening and recombination of existing functionalities. However, current automated hypothesis generation methods, constrained by the statistical co-occurrence nature of Large Language Models (LLMs), lack perception of temporal causality and the "evolutionary patterns" inherent in scientific development. Consequently, they often yield superficial combinations that are logically infeasible. To address this, we propose EvoNarrator, a framework for hypothesis generation based on evolutionary narratives. We first extract structured P-M-L-F (Problem, Method, Limitation, Future Work) quadruples from citation networks. Subsequently, we introduce the SocketMatch mechanism, which eliminates logical disconnects between methods and problems by assessing their deep semantic compatibility. Finally, utilizing three macro patterns-Chain, Divergence, and Convergence-we constrain the generation process within historically logical derivation paths. Furthermore, doubleblind expert reviews yielded an average score of 4.80/5.00 across novelty, feasibility, theoretical, and Logical. Additionally, hindcasting experiments validated its predictive foresight. Crucially, ablation studies indicate that integrating evolutionary patterns facilitates a paradigm shift from conservative incrementalism to theoretically grounded structural innovation. The code is available at https:// github.com/xiyii-star/EvoNarrator.