Scientific method

Scientific methods or processes are considered fundamental to the scientific investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence by scientific communities. Scientists use observations and reasoning to develop technologies and propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of hypotheses. Predictions from these hypotheses are tested by experiment and further technologies developed. Any hypothesis which is cogent enough to make predictions can then be tested reproducibly in this way. Once it has been established that a hypothesis is sound (by use of the above methods), it becomes a theory. Sometimes scientific development takes place differently with a theory first being developed gaining support on the basis of its logic and principles. For example the theory of general relativity was invented, gained supporters, and only later confirmed by experiment.

History

See also: History of science, sociology of science and sociology of scientific knowledge

Related Topics:
History of science - Sociology of science - Sociology of scientific knowledge

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The development of methods for scientific inquiry is indivisible from the development of science.

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The Edwin Smith Papyrus (circa 1600 BC), an ancient surgical textbook, details the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of numerous ailments. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9032043&query=Edwin%20Smith%20papyrus&ct= Although the Ebers papyrus (ca 1550 BC) contains incantations and foul applications created to cast out diseased demons and other superstition, there is evidence of traditional empiricism.

Related Topics:
Edwin Smith Papyrus - 1600 BC - Ebers papyrus - 1550 BC

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In Ancient Greece, towards the middle of the 5th century BC, some of the elements of a scientific tradition were already well established. In Protagoras (318d-f), Plato mentions the teaching of arithmetic, astronomy and geometry in schools. The philosophical ideas of this time were mostly freed from the constraints of everyday phenomena and common sense. This denial of reality as we experience it reaches an extreme in Parmenides who argued that the world is one and that change and subdivision do not exist.

Related Topics:
Ancient Greece - 5th century BC - Plato - Parmenides

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Aristotle provided yet another of the ingredients of scientific tradition: empiricism. For Aristotle, the Platonic, universal ideal is to be found in particular things, what he calls the essence of things. Using the concept of essence, Aristotle reconciles abstract thought with observation. In Aristotelian science, we find the beginnings of a primitive inductive method, although one that is based on collections of objects rather than experimentation.

Related Topics:
Aristotle - Empiricism

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In his enunciation of a 'method' in the 13th century Roger Bacon, under the tuition of Robert Grosseteste, was inspired by the writings of Arab alchemists who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of induction. Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon attempted to describe a rational procedure for establishing causation between phenomena. In the Novum Organum (published 1620), Bacon is at pains to tell us that scientific theories (or rather axioms) should remain as close to the facts as possible:

Related Topics:
13th century - Roger Bacon - Robert Grosseteste - Arab - Alchemists - Aristotle - Induction - 17th century - Francis Bacon - Novum Organum - 1620

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:"The understanding must not therefore be supplied with wings, but rather hung with weights, to keep it from leaping and flying. Now this has never been done; when it is done, we may entertain better hopes of the sciences."

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Bacon's method made progress "by successive steps not interrupted or broken, we rise from particulars to lesser axioms; and then to middle axioms, one above the other; and last of all to the most general". The lesser axioms in this case should be rooted in experience obtained under stringent experimental conditions, for "experience, when it wanders in its own track, is mere groping in the dark". The middle axioms building on the lesser, are "the true and solid and living axioms, on which depend the affairs and fortunes of men". And, last of all, "those which are indeed the most general" which are "abstract and without solidity".

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Bacon's aphorism nineteen (XIX, of Book One) criticizes the tendency to leap to conclusions:

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:"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion."

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and advocates a more cautious approach

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:"The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried."

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In 1619, René Descartes began writing his first major treatise on proper scientific and philosophical thinking, the unfinished Rules for the Direction of the Mind. With this document, Descartes established the framework for a scientific method's guiding principles. The following quote from his 1637 treatise, Discourse on Method presents the four precepts that characterize a scientific method:

Related Topics:
1619 - René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind - 1637 - Discourse on Method

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:"The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of methodic doubt.

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:The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

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:The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

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:And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted."

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Both Bacon and Descartes wanted to provide a firm foundation for scientific thought that avoided the deceptions of the mind and senses. Bacon envisaged that foundation as essentially physical and factual, whereas Descartes trusted to logic and mathematics.

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Galileo Galilei combined quantitative experimentation and mathematical analysis, to permit the enunciation of general physical laws. Isaac Newton systematized these laws in the Principia, which became a model that other sciences sought to emulate. His four "rules of reasoning" are:

Related Topics:
Galileo Galilei - Physical law - Isaac Newton - Principia

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• We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
• Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
• The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
• In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phænomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phænomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

But Newton also left an admonition about a theory of everything:

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:"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things."

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Some methods of reasoning were systematized by John Stuart Mill's Canons, which are five explicit statements of what can be discarded and what can be kept while building a hypothesis. George Boole and William Stanley Jevons also wrote on the principles of reasoning.

Related Topics:
John Stuart Mill - George Boole - William Stanley Jevons

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These attempts to systematize a scientific method were faced with the Problem of induction, which points out that inductive reasoning is not logically valid. David Hume set the difficulty out in detail. Karl Popper, following others, argued that a hypothesis must be falsifiable. Difficulties with this have led to the rejection of the idea that there exists a single method that applies to all science, and that serves to distinguish science from non-science.

Related Topics:
Problem of induction - David Hume - Karl Popper - Falsifiable

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In the past century, some statistical methods have been developed, for reasoning in the face of uncertainty, as an outgrowth of statistical hypothesis testing for eliminating error, an echo of the program of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum.

Related Topics:
Some statistical methods - Statistical hypothesis testing - Novum Organum

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The question of how science operates has importance well beyond scientific circles or the academic community. In the judicial system and in public policy controversies, for example, a study's deviation from accepted scientific practice is grounds for rejecting it as junk science or pseudoscience.

Related Topics:
Science - Junk science - Pseudoscience

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