Scientific method
Different early expressions of empiricism and the scientific method can be found throughout history, for instance with the ancient Stoics, Aristotle,[11] Epicurus,[12] Alhazen,[A][a][B][i] Avicenna, Al-Biruni,[17][18] Roger Bacon[α], and William of Ockham.
[21] In the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries some of the most important developments were the furthering of empiricism by Francis Bacon and Robert Hooke,[22][23] the rationalist approach described by René Descartes and inductivism, brought to particular prominence by Isaac Newton and those who followed him.
[β] There was particular development aided by theoretical works by a skeptic Francisco Sanches,[27] by idealists as well as empiricists John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
Researchers in Bragg's laboratory at Cambridge University made X-ray diffraction pictures of various molecules, starting with crystals of salt, and proceeding to more complicated substances.
Using clues painstakingly assembled over decades, beginning with its chemical composition, it was determined that it should be possible to characterize the physical structure of DNA, and the X-ray images would be the vehicle.
)[C] For example, Benjamin Franklin conjectured, correctly, that St. Elmo's fire was electrical in nature, but it has taken a long series of experiments and theoretical changes to establish this.
This stage frequently involves finding and evaluating evidence from previous experiments, personal scientific observations or assertions, as well as the work of other scientists.
[57] The systematic, careful collection of measurements or counts of relevant quantities is often the critical difference between pseudo-sciences, such as alchemy, and science, such as chemistry or biology.
Scientists are free to use whatever resources they have – their own creativity, ideas from other fields, inductive reasoning, Bayesian inference, and so on – to imagine possible explanations for a phenomenon under study.
"[63][i] Charles Sanders Peirce, borrowing a page from Aristotle (Prior Analytics, 2.25)[65] described the incipient stages of inquiry, instigated by the "irritation of doubt" to venture a plausible guess, as abductive reasoning.
[66]: II, p.290 The history of science is filled with stories of scientists claiming a "flash of inspiration", or a hunch, which then motivated them to look for evidence to support or refute their idea.
William Glen observes that[67] the success of a hypothesis, or its service to science, lies not simply in its perceived "truth", or power to displace, subsume or reduce a predecessor idea, but perhaps more in its ability to stimulate the research that will illuminate ... bald suppositions and areas of vagueness.In general, scientists tend to look for theories that are "elegant" or "beautiful".
[74] Watson and Crick showed an initial (and incorrect) proposal for the structure of DNA to a team from King's College London – Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Raymond Gosling.
These kinds of institutions affect public policy, on a national or even international basis, and the researchers would require shared access to such machines and their adjunct infrastructure.
[81] After considerable fruitless experimentation, being discouraged by their superior from continuing, and numerous false starts,[95][96][97] Watson and Crick were able to infer the essential structure of DNA by concrete modeling of the physical shapes of the nucleotides which comprise it.
Researchers have given their lives for this vision; Georg Wilhelm Richmann was killed by ball lightning (1753) when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite-flying experiment of Benjamin Franklin.
According to the traditional viewpoint, rationality serves a dual purpose: it governs beliefs, ensuring they align with logical principles, and it steers actions, directing them towards coherent and beneficial outcomes.
[118] Another important human bias that plays a role is a preference for new, surprising statements (see Appeal to novelty), which can result in a search for evidence that the new is true.
[p] It took thousands of years of measurements, from the Chaldean, Indian, Persian, Greek, Arabic, and European astronomers, to fully record the motion of planet Earth.
[t] Incoherence, here, means internal errors in logic, like stating opposites to be true; falsification is what Popper would have called the honest work of conjecture and refutation[34] — certainty, perhaps, is where difficulties in telling truths from non-truths arise most easily.
The results of this analysis are of course also purely mathematical in nature and get translated back to the system as it exists in reality via the previously determined correspondence rules—iteration following review and interpretation of the findings.
[139] For example, the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth, how species adapt to their environments, and many other patterns observed in the natural world;[140][141] its most recent major modification was unification with genetics to form the modern evolutionary synthesis.
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.The concept of parsimony should not be held to imply complete frugality in the pursuit of scientific truth.
[x] Through this experiment Einstein was able to equate gravitational and inertial mass; something unexplained by Newton's laws, and an early but "powerful argument for a generalised postulate of relativity".
Various systems of education, including but not limited to the US, have taught the method of science as a process or procedure, structured as a definitive series of steps:[176] observation, hypothesis, prediction, experiment.
[187][z] On the idea of Fleck's thought collectives sociologists built the concept of situated cognition: that the perspective of the researcher fundamentally affects their work; and, too, more radical views.
Norwood Russell Hanson, alongside Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, extensively explored the theory-laden nature of observation in science.
He used the concept of gestalt to show how preconceptions can affect both observation and description, and illustrated this with examples like the initial rejection of Golgi bodies as an artefact of staining technique, and the differing interpretations of the same sunrise by Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.
This is described in a popular 2005 scientific paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John Ioannidis, which is considered foundational to the field of metascience.
[208][ν] In like manner to science, where truth is sought, but certainty is not found, in Proofs and Refutations, what Lakatos tried to establish was that no theorem of informal mathematics is final or perfect.
