
#REDIRECT Scientific method
A scientific method or process is considered fundamental to the science investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence. Scientists use observations, hypothesis and deductions to propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of theory. Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. If a prediction turns out to be correct, the theory survives. Any theory which is Cogency to make predictions can then be tested Reproducibility in this way. The method is commonly taken as the underlying logic of scientific practice. A scientific method is essentially an extremely cautious means of building a supportable, evidence-based understanding of our natural world. ==History== ''See also: History of science'' The development of methods for scientific inquiry is indivisible from the development of science. The Edwin Smith Papyrus (circa 1600s 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 16th century BC) contains incantations and foul applications created to cast out diseased demons and other superstition, there is evidence of traditional empiricism. 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. 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. 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 alchemy who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of Induction (philosophy). 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: :''"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."'' 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". Bacon's aphorism nineteen (XIX, of Book One) criticizes the tendency to leap to conclusions: :''"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."'' and advocates a more cautious approach :''"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."'' 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: :''"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.'' :''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.'' :''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.'' :''And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted."'' 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. Galileo Galilei combined quantitative experimentation and mathematical analysis, to permit the enunciation of general physical laws. Isaac Newton systematized these laws in the ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica '', which became a model that other sciences sought to emulate. His four "rules of reasoning" are: #''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: :''"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Accuracy and precision, than to explain all things."'' 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. 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 ''Falsifiability''. 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. In the past century, decision theory#Choice under uncertainty 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''. 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. ==Elements of a scientific method== The above is a hypothetico-deductive method, and includes observation in step one and four. Each step is subject to peer review for possible mistakes. These activities do not describe all that scientists do (#Scientific method and the practice of science) but apply mostly to experimental sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry). The steps above are often taught in education#fn_1. The Keystones of Science project, sponsored by the journal Science_(journal), has selected a number of scientific articles from that journal and annotated them, illustrating how different parts of each article embody the science method. [http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/scope/keystone1/ Here] is one example, showing how a group of scientists disproved a claim about lateral gene transfer in the human genome. ====''DNA/example''==== :Each step is illustrated by an example from the discovery of the structure of DNA: :#''#DNA/characterization(1)'' :#''#DNA/hypothesis(2)'' :#''#DNA/prediction(3)'' :#''#DNA/experiment(4)'' :The examples are continued in #Evaluation and iteration with ''#DNA/iteration''. ===Characterization=== A scientific method depends upon a careful characterization of the subject of the investigation. (The ''subject'' can also be called ''list of unsolved problems'' or the ''unknown''.) For example, Benjamin Franklin correctly characterized St. Elmo's fire as electrical in nature, but it has taken a long series of experiments and theory to establish this. While seeking the pertinent properties of the subject, this careful thought may also entail some definitions and observations; the observation often demands careful measurement and/or counting. The systematic, careful collection of measurements or counts of relevant quantities is often the critical difference between pseudo-sciences, such as alchemy, and a science, such as chemistry. Scientific measurements taken are usually tabulated, graphed, or mapped, and statistical manipulations, such as correlation and regression, performed on them. The measurements might be made in a controlled setting, such as a laboratory, or made on more or less inaccessible or unmanipulatable objects such as stars or human populations. The measurements often require specialized scientific instruments such as thermometers, spectroscopes, or voltmeters, and the progress of a scientific field is usually intimately tied to their invention and development. Measurements demand the use of ''operational definitions'' of relevant quantities. That is, a scientific quantity is described or defined by how it is measured, as opposed to some more vague, inexact or "idealized" definition. For example, electrical current, measured in Amperes, may be operationally defined in terms of the mass of silver deposited in a certain time on an electrode in an electrochemical device that is described in some detail. The operational definition of a thing often relies on comparisons with standards: the operational definition of "mass" ultimately relies on the use of an artifact, such as a certain kilogram of platinum kept in a laboratory in France. The scientific definition of a term sometimes differs substantially from their natural language usage. For example, mass and weight are often used interchangeably in common discourse, but have distinct meanings in physics. Scientific quantities are often characterized by their units of measure which can later be described in terms of conventional physical units when communicating the work. Measurements in scientific work are also usually accompanied by estimates of their uncertainty. The uncertainty is often estimated by making repeated measurements of the desired quantity. Uncertainties may also be calculated by consideration of the uncertainties of the individual underlying quantities that are used. Counts of things, such as the number of people in a nation at a particular time, may also have an uncertainty due to limitations of the method used. Counts may only represent a sample of desired quantities, with an uncertainty that depends upon the sampling method used and the number of samples taken. New theories sometimes arise upon realizing that certain terms had not previously been sufficiently clearly defined. For example, Albert Einstein first paper on relativity begins by defining simultaneity and the means for determining length. These ideas were skipped over by Isaac Newton with, "''I do not define time in physics#Galileo's water clock, space, place and motion, as being well known to all.''" Einstein's paper then demonstrates that they (viz., absolute time and length independent of motion) were approximations. Francis Crick cautions us that when characterizing a subject, however, it can be premature to define something when it remains ill-understood. In Crick's study of consciousness, he actually found it easier to study awareness in the visual system, rather than to study Free Will, for example. His cautionary example was the gene; the gene was much more poorly understood before Watson and Crick's pioneering discovery of the structure of DNA; it would have been counterproductive to spend much time on the definition of the gene, before them. * Francis Crick (1994), ''The Astonishing Hypothesis'' ISBN 0-684-19431-7 p.20 ====''The precession of Mercury''==== [[Image:Perihelion_precession.jpg|thumb|right|Precession of the perihelion (very exaggerated)]] The characterization phase can require extended and extensive study, even centuries. It took thousands of years of measurements, from the Chaldean, Indian, Persian Empiren, Greece, Arabic and European astronomers, to record the precession of the planet Earth. Newton was able to condense these measurements into consequences of his laws of motion. But the perihelion of the planet Mercury (planet)'s orbit exhibits a precession which is not fully explained by Newton's laws of motion. The observed difference for Mercury's precession, between Newtonian theory and relativistic theory (on the order of 42.5 arc-seconds per century), was one of the pieces of evidence for Einstein's characterization of his theory of General Relativity. This consequence (a difference in the values for this precession of 42.5 arc-seconds per century) was known only after the Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein field equation was published in 1916. ====''DNA/characterization(1)''==== :DNA#The history of DNA research of the structure of DNA is a classic example of #Elements of a scientific method: in 1950 it was known that genetic inheritance had a mathematical description, starting with the studies of Gregor Mendel. But the mechanism of the gene was unclear. Researchers in William Lawrence Bragg 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 which were painstakingly assembled over the course of 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. ''#DNA/hypothesis(2) '' ===Hypothesis development=== A hypothesis is a suggested description of the subject. Normally hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model. Sometimes, but not always, they can also be formulated as existential quantification, stating that some particular instance of the phenomenon being studied has some characteristic and causal explanations, which have the general form of Universal quantification, stating that every instance of the phenomenon has a particular characteristic. Scientists are free to use whatever they can — their own creativity, ideas from other fields, induction, Charles Peirce#Abductive reasoning (abduction), Bayesian inference, etc. — to imagine possible explanations for a phenomenon under study. 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. Michael Polanyi made such creativity the centrepiece of his discussion of methodology. In general scientists tend to look for theories that are "elegant" or "beautiful". In contrast to the usual English use of these terms, they here refer to a theory in accordance with the known facts, which is nevertheless relatively simple and easy to handle. If a model is mathematically too complicated, it is hard to deduce any #Prediction from the hypothesis ====''DNA/hypothesis(2)''==== :For example, in the race to determine the structure of DNA, Francis Crick and James Watson hypothesized that this molecule had a helical structure: two intertwined spirals. But Linus Pauling was about to embark on serious study of the molecule; he was hypothesizing a triple helix. ''#DNA/characterization(1)|#DNA/prediction(3)'' ===Prediction from the hypothesis=== Any useful hypothesis will enable predictions, by deductive reasoning. It might predict the outcome of an experiment in a laboratory setting or the observation of a phenomenon in nature. The prediction can also be statistical and only talk about probabilities. It is essential that the outcome be currently unknown. Only in this case does the eventuation increase the probability that the hypothesis be true. If the outcome is already known, it's called a consequence and should have already been considered while #Hypothesis development. If the predictions are not accessible by observation or experience, the hypothesis is not yet useful for the method, and must wait for others who might come afterward, and perhaps rekindle its line of reasoning. For example, a new technology or theory might make the necessary experiments feasible. ====''Halley's comet''==== The classic example was Edmund Halley's prediction of the year of return of Halley's comet which returned after his death. ====''General Relativity''==== gravitational_lensing">Image:Gravitational lens-full.jpg|right|thumb|200px|gravitational lensing Einstein's theory of General Relativity makes several specific predictions about the observable structure of space-time, such as a prediction that light bends in a gravitational field and that the amount of bending depends in a precise way on the strength of that gravitational field. Arthur Eddington's observations made during a 1919 solar eclipse supported General Relativity rather than Newtonian gravitation. ====''DNA/prediction(3)''==== :When Watson and Crick hypothesized that DNA was a double helix, Francis Crick predicted that a X-ray diffraction image of DNA would show an X-shape. ''#DNA/characterization(1) | #DNA/experiment(4)'' ===Experiment=== Once a prediction is made, it can be tested in an experiment. If the test results contradict the prediction, then the hypothesis under test is incorrect or incomplete and requires either revision or abandonment. If the results confirm the prediction, then the hypothesis is more likely to be correct but might still be wrong and is subject to #Evaluation and iteration Depending on the prediction the experiment can have different shapes. It could be a classical experiment in a laboratory setting, a double-blind study or an archeological excavation. Even taking a plane from New York to Paris is an experiment which tests the aerodynamics hypotheses used for constructing the plane. Scientists assume an attitude of openness and accountability on the part of those conducting an experiment. Detailed recordkeeping is essential, to aid in recording and reporting on the experimental results, and providing evidence of the effectiveness and integrity of the procedure. They will also assist in reproducing the experimental results. This tradition can be seen in the work of Hipparchus (astronomer), when determining a value for the precession of the Earth over 2100 years ago, and 1000 years before Al-Batani. ====''DNA/experiment(4)''==== :When James Watson was sent to investigate what Rosalind Franklin had found in her X-ray diffraction images of DNA, he saw the [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/ X-shape] which Crick had predicted for a helical structure. ''#DNA/characterization(1) | #DNA/iteration'' ==Evaluation and iteration== ===Testing and improvement=== The scientific process is iterative. At any stage it is possible that some consideration will lead the scientist to repeat an earlier part of the process. Failure to develop an interesting hypothesis may lead a scientist to re-define the subject they are considering. Failure of a hypothesis to produce interesting and testable predictions may lead to reconsideration of the hypothesis or of the definition of the subject. Failure of the experiment to produce interesting results may lead the scientist to reconsidering the experimental method, the hypothesis or the definition of the subject. Other scientists may start their own research and enter the process at any stage. They might adopt the characterization and formulate their own hypothesis, or they might adopt the hypothesis and deduce their own predictions. Often the experiment is not done by the person who made the prediction and the characterization is based on experiments done by someone else. Published results of experiments can also serve as a hypothesis predicting their own reproducibility. ====Light==== Light had long been supposed to be made of particles. Isaac Newton, and before him many of the Classical Greeks, was convinced it was so, but his light-is-particles account was overturned by evidence in favor of a wave theory of light suggested most notably in the early 1800s by Thomas Young (scientist), an English physician. Light as waves neatly explained the observed diffraction and interference of light when, to the contrary, the light-as-a-particle theory did not. The wave interpretation of light was widely held to be unassailably correct for most of the 19th century. Around the turn of the century, however, observations were made that a wave theory of light could not explain. This new set of observations could be accounted for by Max Planck's quantum theory (including the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion—both from Albert Einstein), but not by a wave theory of light, nor by a particle theory. ====''DNA/iteration''==== : Watson was able to deduce the essential structure of DNA by concrete modelling DNA#Discovery of the structure of DNA of the nucleotides which comprise it. He was guided by the bond lengths which had been deduced by Linus Pauling. In all of this, the nature of the chemical bond had been characterized by the theory of quantum mechanics. After James Watson and Francis Crick's breakthrough discovery, an entire field of study was legitimized: molecular biology. ''#DNA/characterization(1)'' ===Verification=== [[Image:Ball Lightning.jpg|thumb|right|200px|ball lightning]] Science is a social enterprise, and scientific work will become accepted by the community only if they can be verified. Crucially, experimental and theoretical results must be reproduced by others within the science community. Researchers have given their lives for this vision; Georg Wilhelm Richmann was killed by ball lightning to his forehead (1753) when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite experiment of Benjamin Franklin. ==Scope and goals== The scientific method can be applied to anything within the range of our experiences. As long as something has an impact on our lives we can formulate theories and try to predict, what this impact might be. The impact itself is an experiment, testing whether our theory was right. It can also be applied, starting with #Experiment or #Prediction from the hypothesis, to theories coming from different sources than the scientific method itself, as long as those make prediction, or it is possible to deduce some. People use this method all the time. They have theories about devices and make predictions how those will react to their actions. If a device does not work as expected the experiment disproves their theory. If they adjust their theory they are applying the scientific method, if they nevertheless stick to their theory they don't. The scientific method doesn't aim at giving an ultimate answer. It's iterative and recursive nature implies, that it will never come to an end. So any answer it gives is a provisional answer. Hence it can't prove or verify anything in a strong sense. But if a theory passed many experimental tests without being disproved, it is considered superior to any theory, which has not yet been put to a test. ==Scientific community== Often the scientific method is not employed by a single person, but several people cooperate. In such a case we are talking about a scientific community. Various techniques have been developed to ensure the integrity of the scientific method within such an environment. ===Peer review evaluation=== Scientific journals use a process of ''peer review'', in which scientists' manuscripts are submitted by editors of scientific journals to (usually one to three) fellow (usually anonymous) scientists familiar with the field for evaluation. The referees may or may not recommend publication, publication with suggested modifications, or, sometimes, publication in another journal. This serves to keep the scientific literature free of unscientific or crackpot work, helps to cut down on obvious errors, and generally otherwise improve the quality of the scientific literature. Work announced in the popular press before going through this process is generally frowned upon. Sometimes peer review inhibits the circulation of unorthodox work, and at other times may be too permissive. The peer review process is not always successful, but has been very widely adopted by the scientific community. ===Reproduction and Recordkeeping=== Sometimes experimentators are making systematic errors during their experiments or even forge the results. Hence scientists try to reproduce important experiments or use different setups for testing the same prediction. Experimentators are therefore expected to make detailed records of their experiments, which provides evidence of the effectiveness and integrity of the procedure and assists in reproduction. Such records can also help other scientists conceiving new experiments base on an old one and engineers searching for an application of the phenomenon. ==Philosophical issues== The study of a scientific method is distinct from the practice of science and is more a part of the philosophy of science, history of science and sociology of science of science than of science. While such studies have limited direct impact on day-to-day scientific practice, they have a vital role in justifying and defending the scientific approach. We find ourselves in a world that is not directly understandable. We find that we sometimes disagree with others as to the fact of the things we see in the world around us, and we find that there are things in the world that sometimes are at odds with our present understanding. The scientific method attempts to provide a way in which we can reach agreement and understanding. A perfect scientific method would work in such a way that rationality application of the method would always result in agreement and understanding; in effect a perfect method would not leave any room for rational agents to disagree. Philosophers of science have long sought such a method. The material presented below is intended to show that, as with all Philosophy topics, the search has been neither straightforward nor simple. ===Theory-dependence of observation=== A scientific method depends on observation, in defining the subject under investigation and in performing experiments. Observation involves philosophy of perception , and so is a cognitive process. That is, one does not make an observation passively, but is actively involved in distinguishing the thing being observed from surrounding sensory data. Therefore, observations depend on some underlying understanding of the way in which the world functions, and that understanding may influence what is perceived, noticed, or deemed worthy of consideration. (See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for an early version of this understanding of the impact of cultural artifacts on our perceptions of the world.) Empirical observation is supposedly used to determine the acceptability of some hypothesis within a theory. When someone claims to have made an observation, it is reasonable to ask them to justify their claim. Such a justification must make reference to the theory - operational definitions and hypotheses - in which the observation is embedded. That is, the observation is a component of the theory that also contains the hypothesis it either verifies or falsifies. But this means that the observation cannot serve as a neutral arbiter between competing hypotheses. Observation could only do this "neutrally" if it were independent of the theory. Thomas Kuhn denied that it is ever possible to isolate the theory being tested from the influence of the theory in which the observations are grounded. He argued that observations always rely on a specific paradigm, and that it is not possible to evaluate competing paradigms independently. By "paradigm" he meant, essentially, a logically consistent "portrait" of the world, one that involves no logical contradictions. More than one such logically consistent construct can each paint a usable likeness of the world, but it is pointless to pit them against each other, theory against theory. Neither is a standard by which the other can be judged. Instead, the question is which "portrait" is judged by some set of people to promise the most in terms of “puzzle solving”. For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes. The individual's choice between paradigms involves setting two or more “portraits" against the world and deciding which likeness is most promising. In the case of a general acceptance of one paradigm or another, Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists. Acceptance or rejection of some paradigm is, he argued, more a social than a logical process. That observation is embedded in theory does not mean that observations are irrelevant to science. Scientific understanding derives from observation, but the acceptance of scientific statements is dependent on the related theoretical background or paradigm as well as on observation. Coherentism and scepticism offer alternatives to foundationalism for dealing with the difficulty of grounding scientific theories in something more than observations. ===Indeterminacy of theory under empirical testing=== The W. V. Quine-Pierre Duhem thesis points out that any theory can be made compatible with any empirical observation by the addition of suitable ad hoc hypotheses. This is analogous to the way in which an infinite number of curves can be drawn through any set of data points on a graph. This thesis was accepted by Karl Popper, leading him to reject Falsifiability#Naive_Falsification in favour of 'survival of the fittest', or most falsifiable, of scientific theories. In Popper's view, any hypothesis that does not make testable predictions is simply not science. Such a hypothesis may be useful or valuable, but it cannot be said to be science. Confirmation holism, developed by W. V. Quine, states that empirical data is not sufficient to make a judgement between theories. A theory can always be made to fit with the available empirical data. That empirical evidence does not serve to determine between alternate theories does not imply that all theories are of equal value. Rather than pretending to use a universally applicable methodological principle, the scientist is making a personal choice when she chooses some particular theory over another. One result of this is that specialists in the philosophy of science stress the requirement that observations made for the purposes of science be restricted to ''intersubjective'' objects. That is, science is restricted to those areas where there is general agreement on the nature of the observations involved. It is comparatively easy to agree on observations of physical phenomena, harder for them to agree on observations of social or mental phenomena, and difficult in the extreme to reach agreement on matters of theology or ethics. ===Demarcation=== Scientific Method is touted as one way of determining which disciplines are scientific and which are not. Those which follow a scientific method might be considered sciences; those that do not are not. That is, method might be used as the Demarcation problem between science and non-science. If it is not possible to articulate a definitive method, then it may also not be possible to articulate a definitive distinction between science and non-science, between science and pseudo-science, and between scientists and non-scientists. Feyerabend denies there is a scientific method, and in his book Against Method argues that scientific progress is not the result of the application of any particular method. In essence, he says that ''anything goes''. ===Science as a communal activity=== In his book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' Kuhn argues that the process of observation and evaluation take place within a paradigm. 'A paradigm is what the members of a community of scientists share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm' (postscript, part 1). On this account, science can be done only as a part of a community, and is inherently a communal activity. For Kuhn the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is in the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there is insufficient difference between social practices in science and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. It is apparent that social factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but that they do not serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. Furthermore, although on this account science is socially constructed, it does not follow that reality is a social construct. Kuhn’s ideas are equally applicable to both realist and anti-realist ontologies. The definition of a scientific method is debatable and contended. positivism, empiricism, and falsifiability theories are unable to satisfy their aim of giving a definitive account of the logic of science. The sociology of science may be incapable of accounting for the success of the scientific enterprise. ===Scientific thought=== Carl Sagan, in his book ''The Demon-Haunted World'', argues that we should use a scientific method as a tool for Scientific skepticism. When we are presented with a new concept — ESP, for example — we should test the claims of its proponents against experiment ourselves (or gather evidence from as many sources as possible), and reject the theory if the evidence shows its claims to be false. Sagan was particularly interested in those movements which misrepresent science - pseudoscience or quackery. ==Scientific method and the practice of science== The primary constraints on science are: *Publication, i.e. Peer review *Resources (mostly, funding) It has not always been like this: in the old days of the "gentleman scientist" funding (and to a lesser extent publication) were far weaker constraints. Both of these constraints indirectly bring in a scientific method — work that too obviously violates the constraints will be difficult to publish and difficult to get funded. Journals do not require submitted papers to conform to anything more specific than "good scientific practice" and this is mostly enforced by peer review. Originality, importance and interest are more important - see for example the [http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/get_published/index.html author guidelines] for ''Nature (journal)''. Criticisms (see Critical theory) of these restraints are that they are so nebulous in definition (e.g. "good scientific practice") and open to ideological, or even political, manipulation apart from a rigorous practice of a scientific method, that they often serve to censor rather than promote scientific discovery. Apparent censorship through refusal to publish ideas unpopular with mainstream scientists (unpopular because of ideological reasons and/or because they seem to contradict long held scientific theories) has soured the popular perception of scientists as being neutral or seekers of truth and often denigrated popular perception of science as a whole. ==Notes== #fn_1_backTeachers using inquiry education as a teaching method sometimes teach a slightly modified version of a scientific method in which an inquiry, a "Question", is substituted for the step one of a scientific method: "Characterization, Observation, Definition, etc. ". ==Historical references to scientific method== * William Stanley Jevons, 1874, 1877. ''The Principles of Science'', 786pp., index. Reprinted by Dover, 1958, with a forward by Ernst Nagel. ==External links== *[http://www.freeinquiry.com/intro-to-sci.html An Introduction to Science: Scientific Thinking and a scientific method] by Steven D. Schafersman. *[http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html Introduction to a scientific method] *[http://dharma-haven.org/science/myth-of-scientific-method.htm The Myth of a scientific method] by Dr. Terry Halwes *[http://religiousbook.net/Lectures/Sciense_and_religion.html Scientific Method in Religious Practice] *[http://www.galilean-library.org/theory.html Theory-ladenness] by Paul Newall at The Galilean Library *[http://www.galilean-library.org/academy/viewtopic.php?t=62 Lakatos' Lectures on Scientific Method], discussed at The Academy forum Scientific method simple:Scientific method th:ระเบียบวิธีทางวิทยาศาสตร์ zh-cn:科学方法
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== ''THE'' Scientific Method ==
Here's a major problem. I don't see a clear solution. Many scientists object to the the numbered steps, they object to the very concept ''The Scientific Method,'' and they fight to get it removed from grade-school textbooks. Examples:
~~~~ , and it would be good to log-in when you work on Wikipedia. I will wait for some discussion with you on this talk page, or elsewhere. If, after some interval, the statements in the linked page cannot be justified, please do not be disappointed if some other editor moves that link to another location. This scientific method article is heavily referenced by others. User:Ancheta Wis 11:52, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, User:Ancheta Wis.
Science in religion is very delicate subject.
This article is my lection... I have 10 years experience in practice of yoga (religion) and some years as instructor. I verifyed used method and observed repeatable results.
I'm ready for answer you questions.
==Postdictions==
Predictions do not refer exclusively to future experiments, but are often "postdictions" or explanations of surprising results from earlier experiments. For example, one of the first successes of General Relativity was its explanation of the precession of Mercury, an anomaly that had been known for over fifty years.
:According to the logic of the article, a Postdiction is actually part of the Characterization stage. During the Characterization stage, Einstein is using the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury as confirming evidence of the theory, not a prediction at the date of publication 1915. The essential part of a prediction is that the result is not known. It takes honesty on the part of the researcher to distinguish what is known from what is not known, thus the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury is Not A Prediction.
Based on this position, I recommend reversion of the latest addition. Now
*if the "prediction" is actually something that is not yet observed, such as the existence of black holes in 1936 (Oppenheimer et al)
*then predicting the existence of black holes in 1936 is a true prediction of GR,
*just like predicting the deflection of light due to a star's gravitational field is a true prediction of GR in 1915,
*but precession of perihelion of Mercury is a postdiction User:Ancheta Wis 18:21, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:I'll grant that postdiction does not meet the literal definition of prediction, but the term "prediction" has been used by scientists to refer to a broad array of events, including not only the literal definition, but also explanations for anomalous previously-observed data. There are several revisions that would satisfy me, including a note in the Characterization section to the effect of "Postdictions are sometimes referred to as predictions, but since the experiment preceeds the hypothesis, these are more properly termed part of the Characterization stage." In any case, decisions on revision / reversion of this page might also be applied to a similar edit on Prediction. I may have been over-hasty in my edits. If so, my apologies - I'm still new here.User:SMesser 21:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
:Thank you for your willingness to engage in collaborative editing. How about this proposed text?
::When a researcher has correctly characterized the subject of investigation, then that researcher can deduce consequences of the characterization; for example, when Einstein built up his logical structure for GR based on his Equivalence principle, then he was able to deduce
#The precession of the perihelion of the orbit of the Mercury (planet)
#The bending of light rays passing near an intense gravitational field
#The dilatation of time for a process in an intense gravitational field
#etc.
::In 1915, the Equivalence principle and the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of the Mercury (planet)
were known. Thus, his characterization, based on at least 2 pieces of experimental evidence, served to bolster his confidence in making a prediction:
:::The path of light rays passing near an intense gravitational field will be ''bent''. This prediction was corroborated by Eddington in 1919.
::In the 1930s, Robert J. Oppenheimer, while studying solutions of GR, was led to predict black holes
::By the 2000s, Gravity Probe B was poised to corroborate yet another prediction of GR.
How's this? User:Ancheta Wis 21:36, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
::::This works nicely - thank you.User:SMesser 14:20, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
== Clarification needed ==
''Teachers using inquiry as a teaching method sometimes teach a slightly modified version of the scientific method in which "Question" is substituted for Observation.''
It's not clear what this sentence is trying to say, since neither "Question" nor "Observation" are in the preceding description of the scientific method.
:Agreed. Removed it. -User:Vsmith 22:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:Actually, "Question" and "Observation" are part of the Scientific method#Characterization (first) step, in which a questioning, inquiring mind is engaged in a subject. The ''Teachers using inquiry ...'' sentence touches on an educational process which attempts to instill this critical facility into students who might not necessarily have enough mental background to be active questioners (inquirers). When these steps are integrated into a whole, then this may add to the students' mental equipment. Before jumping to the conclusion that ''observation'' is not part of the first step, try reading the rest of the article. Thus an active questioning mind is a prerequisite to the scientific method. Thank you for raising the question; however, it would be good to discuss how the sentence might be re-integrated into the article. One possibility is as a footnote. User:Ancheta Wis 01:06, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::The phrase could and probably should be inserted in a better place in the article in a modified form - but, it was out of place where it was. The substitution of ''question'' for ''observation'' is in error. Obervation must precede any questioning, cannot just leave it out - no observation, nothing to question. Observing, questioning, measuring or characterizing are essential to the ''method''. -User:Vsmith 01:52, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
==Mass and weight==
Keep going, User:Ancheta Wis—you are moving in the right direction.
You started from the implication of ignorance or blatant disregard of some God-given truth in
:''mass'' and ''weight'' are quite distinct concepts, but the distinction is often ignored in everyday life.
Then, after deleting my clarification, you went from the fat to the fire in claiming
:But the distinction is moot in in many applications in our everyday life. For those who live only on the surface of the earth and are not in orbit around it, there may not be an obvious distinction (except perhaps for those who study gravitation and like fields in physics).
I guess you meant to make it not sound so deliberate, more like you were offering an excuse that there is really no reason for us to care about this supposed "difference." Of course, you had to throw in a little jab, pointing out the moral superiority of students in particular fields of activity, who are naturally so much smarter than the average Joe.
At that point, I was starting to think that what we needed was an addition along these lines:
:Some scientists isolated in their ivory towers become so delusional and out of touch with reality as to insist that when we buy and sell goods by weight, we'd want to measure some quantity which varies with the strength of the local gravitational field. We do not do so, and we should not do so, we have never done so. The size of a rotl or a pound or any other unit of (mass, weight—take your pick, they are the same thing in this context, though ''weight'' has had this meaning for 800 years longer than ''mass'' has) might have varied considerably with geography, but that was due to factors such as the whims of kings, not variations in gravity.
But then you took out any reference to that second class of people who are either ignorant, obstinate, or indifferent in saying:
:On the surface of the Earth, the distinction may not be obvious (except perhaps for those who study gravitation and like fields in physics). In orbit around Earth, we are weightless, but not massless.
Then you even took out the "master race" stuff:
:for example, ''mass'' and ''weight'' are quite distinct concepts. On the surface of the Earth, the distinction may not be obvious, but in orbit around Earth, we are weightless and not massless.
So now all we are left with is the logically flawed jump from the meaning of "weightless" to the God-given meaning of "weight".
Actually, if a discussion uses both ''weight'' and ''weightless'', the use of the word ''weightless'' is quite helpful in identifying which of the several meanings of the ambiguous word ''weight'' is being used. It distinguishes not only the meaning which is the same as ''mass'' in its physics jargon meaning, but it also distinguishes a couple of quite different meanings of ''weight'' as a particular kind of force within physics jargon.
If I don't have any bananas, I don't make that point by saying "All my bananas are weightless." Yet that is the only way that bananas could be weightless, in any of the applications in which their weight is normally discussed. That meaning of weight in commerce, and in cooking, is quite proper and legitimate, well justified in history, in linguistics, and in the law. ''Weightless'' is useless in connection with this meaning of the word weight, so the use of this word ''weightless'' is a remarkably effective indicator that the ''weight'' in that particular discussion is not the weight which is not different from physics-jargon mass (yet quite different from other meanings of the ambiguous word ''mass'', which is one of the reasons we aren't real quick to incorporate that physics jargon into our everyday lives). [Got a little carried away with double negatives, I'll let the readers get a little mental exercise figuring it out.)
Furthermore, the use of the word ''weightless'' also helps to identify which of a couple of quite different physics-jargon meanings is being used. If you don't know it already, if you consider only the force due to gravity from the ''F'' = ''G·m·M/r²'' formula, for a person or object on the Space Station, the Earth is pulling 90% as hard as it does when they are on its surface.
See, for example, Sears and Zemansky, ''University Physics,'' 1970, p. 61:
: There is no general agreement among physicists as to the precise definition of "weight." Some prefer to use this term for a quantity we shall define later and call the "apparent weight" or "relative weight." In the absence of a generally accepted definition we shall continue to use the term as defined above.
Their "definition above":
: The weight of a body can now be defined more generally than in the preceding chapters as the resultant gravitational force exerted on the body by all other bodies in the universe. . .
This corresponds to the usage in Wikipedia apparent weight as well.
Contrast that with the definition given by NIST in SP 811, which
corresponds to the "apparent weight" of Sears and Zemansky:[http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec08.html]
:NOTE: The local force of gravity on a body, this is, its weight, consists of the resultant of all the gravitational forces acting on the body and the local centrifugal force due to the rotation of the celestial object. The effect of atmospheric buoyancy is usually excluded, and thus the weight of a body is generally the local force of gravity on the body in a vacuum.
When the term "weightless" is used, it is almost always in connection with the latter of the specific physics-jargon force meanings, not the Sears and Zemansky meaning.
It isn't so simple after all.
Just a little more from the experts in this field, in the same section of NIST's SP811, ''Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)'' quoted above:[http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec08.html#8.3]
:In commercial and everyday use, and especially in common parlance, weight is usually used as a synonym for mass. Thus the SI unit of the quantity weight used in this sense is the kilogram (kg) and the verb "to weigh" means "to determine the mass of" or "to have a mass of."
:Examples: the child's weight is 23 kg the briefcase weighs 6 kg Net wt. 227 g
Then this section concludes with the excellent advice:
:In any case, in order to avoid confusion, whenever the word \"weight\" is used, it should be made clear which meaning is intended.
User:Gene Nygaard 12:50, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
2005 marks one century since the publication of Einstein's five seminal papers and has been declared WYP 2005 - the World Year of Physics in commemoration. Along that theme, I invite your energetic contributions to the ''definition'' article, where the above distinctions between mass and weight may very well enliven that article. There are a host of issues beyond mass and weight in physics, such as simultaneity, the question of inertia and inertial coordinates, their manifestation on the Earth as the trade winds acting under the Coriolis force, time, space, etc. What do you say to illustrating the concept of ''definition'' with the above discussion, but transferred to the ''definition'' article. (In my opinion, ''inertia'' is an even weightier topic, whose article may very well be improved by a disambiguation along these lines.) User:Ancheta Wis 16:01, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:Note- I personally did not write the specific prose that ignited your discussion. There have been thousands of edits and dozens of editors for this article, which has had a rocky history. Some of these editors have even been banned, but perhaps this article was merely one of the ones they touched. Anyways, a short browse of the links cited should reveal the short distance to the edges of our knowledge, even in this vast encyclopedia. I can start a paragraph on the talk page for talk:definition, if you like.
::I don't know about the earliest version I talked about, but it certainly is your name on three of the specific changes in the quoted language to which I referred, plus the removal of an extraneous doubled "not". The last three versions were certainly yours.
::02:57, 23 Dec 2004 Ancheta Wis (Difference between mass and weight)
::02:52, 23 Dec 2004 Ancheta Wis (→Characterization)
::19:17, 22 Dec 2004 Ancheta Wis m (→Characterization)
::19:17, 22 Dec 2004 Ancheta Wis (→Characterization -The difference between mass and weight becomes obvious for space travelers.)
:: User:Gene Nygaard 04:14, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
== Never ==
Categorical statements that use the words ''always'' or ''never'' are welcome additions to our knowledge, but should be used with care. A ''test'' or an experiment is a comparison of an expectation with an observation. Thus it is possible to have an astronomical experiment. All that is required is that something be unknown first. When we think we know enough to be able to predict something, that is an expectation. If we then make an observation for that something, that combination of expectation and observation qualifies as an experiment.
The list of unsolved problems unsolved problems in physics is long; It often takes researchers considerable time to scientific method#characterization some aspect of their chosen problem. Here is an example, from astronomy, our first science: the cause of the Galaxy rotation problem is currently unknown, with the best guess being a putative concept, ''dark matter''. But if dark matter can then explain the rotation rate of the galaxies, then a brave-enough researcher can make a prediction. An experiment can then be designed and then performed.
In other words, I disagree with the categorical statement
*In observation-based fields of science, actual experiments are never performed ...
The Hubble Space Telescope is an observatory which has had many experimental projects, for example, even providing the venue for experimental corroboration for the hypothesis of dark matter.
We should probably re-phrase some of the latest edits to the article. User:Ancheta Wis 14:38, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:''Never'' is gone. User:Vsmith 02:46, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Messenger particles / exchange particles ==
The newest addition under reevaluation has a nice link to the Exchange particles of Gravitation x The Standard Model. If it is alright with everyone, I propose moving the link to the Standard Model and appending it there, with an attendant link to that article on this page. Is that alright? That means the hypothesized Graviton and the well-founded Photon, Gluon, and the W's and Z will sit together as they are thought to sit. My reason is that this item under Reevaluation is simply an iteration and recursion of the Scientific Method, where the hypothetical items are the relationship of the Graviton, Photon, W's and Z, and the Gluons. It's physics, alright, but it belongs on a physics page rather than the General Interest page for the Scientific Method, what with the Gluons and Gravitons and all. The link is actually a nice summary of the Standard Model + Gravitation. User:Ancheta Wis 00:38, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: Makes sense to me. Go for it.User:SMesser 17:32, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
: Link transferred Theory of everything. User:Ancheta Wis 18:32, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Conservative now, revolutionary then ==
:''This method is essentially an extremely conservative approach towards building a supportable, evidenced understanding of the various aspects of the world around us.''
I agree that the scientific method is not revolutionary today, and can even be viewed as conservative. But 400 years ago, it turned the world on its ear. Thus the addition above is a relative statement, and can be viewed as an editorial comment. So where does this relative statement lead? How about discussing the direction you want the article to go? User:Ancheta Wis 01:57, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:Thinking about it, the ''hypotheses'' propounded by researchers, in order to solve some problem, can still be revolutionary; thus certain parts of the scientific method can be just as revolutionary as during Galileo's time. Again, just what does ''extremely conservative'' mean in the statement above? Taking the current theories of physics as an example, the experimental deductions and predictions will ''have'' to be revolutionary, just to get past our current conceptual problems. I am not so sure the sentence can stand the way it is.
:I reworked a few words per the current comment below: User:Ancheta Wis 11:53, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Current comment ==
{|
|-
||Current
||Comment
|-
||Science deals with assertions about the way the world is, in the form of theory, hypothesis or observations.
||''Theory'', at least as used in physics, overlaps both hypothesis and observation. That confuses the usage. Hypothesis is a possible explanation about an unknown, ''before'' the experiment. Hypothesis is raw guess, unsupported until more evidence can be amassed, from any direction. Hypothesis is flimsier than theory, but its frailty is also a strength, because it easily can become theory with more evidence from observation, from mathematics, etc. My favorite example is the scientist who realized that Salmon might return from the ocean to their streams using their sense of smell, as he smelled the environment near a waterfall. It took him years to prove that realization. If you were to strike the word ''theory'', I would agree with the sentence. If you were to replace ''hypothesis'' with ''guess'' I would not disagree, but probably the sentence would not survive in Wikipedia.
|-
||Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. If the prediction is found to be correct - then the theory remains.
||Agree, if the word ''theories'' is replaced by ''hypotheses'', or ''guesses''. There are several parts: 1)If a problem is understood well enough to posit a prediction, that is a major advance. 2)That is different from actually testing the prediction with an experiment. For example, there are not any currently known ways to currently test ''string theory'' because we don't operate at the huge energies, high temperatures or tiny time scales needed for our current understanding of ''string theory''. Or maybe we don't know enough mathematics. If the hypothesis survives, then it is theory, so I don't disagree with the second occurrence. Thus I might have phrased it ''Predictions from these hypotheses are tested by experiment. If the prediction is found to be correct - then the theory survives.''
|-
||If the prediction is shown to be wrong, then the theory must be wrong.
||Actually, the defect might be anywhere along the chain: in theory, in observation, in experiment design, in experiment process, in basic definition, etc.
|-
||Any theory which makes predictions can be tested scientifically in this way.
||Agree
|-
||The idea is that these methods underlie the practice of science, enabling it to determine which theories, hypotheses and observations are true.
||Agree
|-
||For short, use #The scientific method (#Characterization, #Hypothesis development, #Prediction from the hypothesis, #Experiment, #Evaluation and iteration).
||this is a summary mnemonic
|-
||This method is essentially an extremely conservative approach towards building a supportable, evidenced understanding of the various aspects of the world around us.
||Perhaps replace the word ''conservative'' with the word ''cautious''
|}
end of Current Comment User:Ancheta Wis 11:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Science manages... ==
By attempting to summarise too much, the intro now says nothing intelligible.User:Banno
From the first para: "Science manages new assertions about our world with theories — hypotheses and observations". Science ''manages''? What does that mean? User:Banno
The assertion "if a prediction fails the theory fails" is simply wrong. User:Banno
"Any theory which is strong enough to make verifiable predictions can then be tested scientifically in this way." So if a theory makes predictions that are not verified, it is not a scientific theory? Come again? Did the author mean ''potently'' verifiable? if so, what about falsifiability? User:Banno
"With them scientists determine which theories, hypotheses and observations are true." Do you really want to assert that science is determinate? Then you had better re-write the section ''reevaluation''. Also implicit in this sentence is the idea that only scientific facts are true, which is cobblers. User:Banno 11:27, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
===Reconstruction===
{|
|-
||Current
||Proposed
|-
||Science manages new assertions about our world with theories — hypotheses and observations.
||Scientists propose new assertions about our world with theories: observations, hypotheses, deductions and tests.
|-
||Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. If a prediction turns out correct, the theory survives, but if a prediction fails the theory fails.
||Predictions from these hypotheses are tested by experiment. If the prediction is found to be correct - then the theory survives.
|-
||Any theory which is strong enough to make verifiable predictions can then be tested scientifically in this way.
||Any theory which is cogency enough to make falsifiability predictions can then be tested reproducibility in this way.
|-
||These are the underlying methods of scientific practice. With them scientists determine which theories, hypotheses and observations are true.
||
|-
||The scientific method is essentially an extremely cautious means of building a supportable, evidenced understanding of our world.
||
|-
|}
Note: Please improve or comment as you see fit. User:Ancheta Wis 14:07, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
''The appearance of falsifiability already in the introduction bothers me for two reasons. First of all, it is not part of the scientific method in its canonical form. A number of eminent scientists and philosophers think falsification has no place in science (I'm thinking chiefly of David Stove and Martin Gardner ( see http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html ). The other reason is that Popper himself, despite having the title 'Professor of Logic and Scientific Method' at LSE, wasn't much for scientific method ( see http://www.univie.ac.at/karlpopper2002/abstracts/ContributedPapers/worall.pdf ). User:ChrisSteinbach 08:17, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)''
== Covariant laws ==
Acrotatus, the article on scientific method is not an article about the content of the laws of science. It is commentary about the methods of science; how some logical predicate relates to some other logical predicate. Multiple contributors have added content to the initial paragraphs of this article, which are taken, expanded into articles of their own, and which live in peace there. I personally like your comments about a certain characteristic of the laws of mechanics, which were first observed by Galileo. The current mathematical statements in the articles about invariants under transformation would be improved for general consumption if you were to put your statements there. I have to state, that the invariants have a long history dating back to at least the Ancient Greeks, and that physicists are attached to them. However, the mathematicians, who have a claim to the invariants themselves, are finding that some pet ideas, such as conservation of energy, do not necessarily hold in a gravitational field. This finding, by David Hilbert, 1915 has not set well with others, who have found some expressions (involving pseudotensors) that can still be called invariants. If you like, we could transfer your work to a section of the physics articles. We could work together on this. For example, we could put your statements in the variational principle article.
Other possibilities: galilean invariance, physical law ...
But the invariants, as a concept, may not be well-founded, even though they have a long tradition in science. And if that were to be the case (if some experiment were to prove that energy is not conserved in a strong gravitational field, for example), then even the invariants would be history, according to the principles of the scientific method.
One of the ways that this could be accomplished might be to insert your comments into a /Invariants subpage. We could work on them there and discuss exactly where to put them in an appropriate article.
:Agathocles of B., I call your attention to the Equivalence principle where your thoughts about covariance are in play. You are not alone in your thinking, but please refrain from further breaching experiments on this page. User:Ancheta Wis 11:22, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== Critique of the final sentence of the lead paragraph ==
To the contributor of the final sentence of the lead paragraph:
:"The scientific method is essentially a means of building support for a certain hypotheses through evidence."
If a researcher seeks to confirm a hypothesis H, one way to do it is by assumption some ''opposite hypothesis'' (or ''null hypothesis'') Ň, and then seeking to disprove Ň. If the Ň was disproven, then H survives, but only as another possibility. There are errors (Type I error and Type II error, as examples) for which the researcher must be vigilant.
The previous ending sentence for the lead paragraph was stronger, because all this sentence does is leave the door open for H, Ň, or other possible hypotheses. Thus the need for evidence; the sentence does not state the role for some consequent prediction (some logical consequence of H) which would bolster the case for H, or disprove Ň etc.
Can you reply here, or better, rework the sentence? User:Ancheta Wis 10:13, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
----
== laws ==
I removed the following paragraph that was revently added. It is badly written, and more important, simply not true. First, the word "proved" has no business in science. Second, while it is true that many individual scientists may think along those lines, and this assumption may be made for certain specific experiments, it is not at all fundamental to the method. Indeed, determining exactly what proerties of the universe vary and which do not over various changes (including space and time) is part and parcel of the goal of science. User:Lee Daniel Crocker 09:48, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:There is a fundamental assumption in scientific method and this is that the scientific "laws" should always be space-time position independant or bounded to strictly defined space-time co-ordinates. This assumption is made to preserve that experiments and their results are also space-time position independant or space-time position bounded, so that it is not necessary to repeat experiments to all space-time co-ordinates in order to be able to prove a scientific theory. If the laws that govern experiments are position dependant and/or cannot be bounded in a specific space-time position, then the experiments have to be repeated to all space-time co-ordinates (or to all bounded space-time co-ordinates the scientific theory requires), in order for the scientific theory to be proved.
The answer to your question, "Dear scientists, could you tell us whether scientific 'laws' are dependant to spacetime or not?" is simple: some are, some aren't. Science is the method by which we discover which are which. The initial paragraph of this article is beautifully worded, pithy, informative, ''and complete''. Please stop messing with it. User:Lee Daniel Crocker 10:17, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: yes but in order to define a scientific law you have to define it as space-time position independant (or strictly bounded to specific space-time coordinates). Thats why scientific laws are defined as space-time position independant laws (may be later some one proves that they are not, so they stop beeing scientific laws). Don you understand that? I hope now you can, so please put back the definition of scientific laws in scientific method. User:Agasicles 10:39, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Scientific "laws" (yeah right, we wish!) are basically just a summary of a large number of empiricism observations. If the bunch of observations (think experiments, or just hanging out with a pair of binoculars) seem to work out the same whether you are here or there, or whether you are standing on your head, then the law you come up with will be space-time independant. On the other hand, if things come out different depending on where you're standing, then the law you are using to summarise your set of observations should contain space-time as a variable. Space and time are just two of many many many variables that you might use in a law by the way. See SI for a comprehensive list of the base quantity and their measures. That's by far not the end of it though, since you can make up an endless list of derived measures and quantities: km/h (speed of a car), ms-2 (acceleration of same car), l/km (fuel efficiency of said car).
User:Kim Bruning 10:41, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: So your answer is that scientific laws can be defined as independant to space-time, but can also be defined as dependant to space-time. Ok then, could you please put this scientific answer to the definition of the scientific method? I am going to define now a scientific law, a space-time position dependant one. From now on, and for the next 3 seconds, moon is made by cheese! Then it turns to rock again. What a scientist I am! I can assure you also that I made 3 experiments during those 3 seconds and that all of them prooved that moon was actually cheese. Here you are the results of my experiments. Delicious, arent they? User:Agasicles 10:54, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::: Interesting. Well for now it's not a law, but rather a hypothesis. (hypothesis, theory and law can basically be the same thing, but a hypothesis is something you just made up, while a law is something that people made up ages ago and ''still'' hasn't been falsified, while a theory is somewhere in between). Though truely if you have actual samples of cheese, and they taste yummy, then I can surmise that at least there is some cheese on the moon. Though perhaps it's just a small amount left behind by astronauts there? We'll have to take more samples and find out. User:Kim Bruning
:::: Exactly. So you agree with me. Scientific laws are laws defined as space-time position independant and laws prooven to be space-time position independant by all experiments until now. Space-time position dependant laws are not scientific ones, you may call them hypothesis or whatever. Why dont you want to put the scientific law definition in scientific method article? User:Agasicles 11:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::You said "''On the other hand, if things come out different depending on where you're standing, then the law you are using to summarise your set of observations should contain space-time as a variable.''". Yes but the law that contains space-time as a variable, should be defined as space-time position independant. You cannot play with that law, and say for example that now is defined as proportional to space-time variable, then next time change the law and define it as reverse proportional of space-time variable without defining another law (that handles this change) as space-time position independant. I hope that you can understand that. User:Agasicles 11:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::: Not quite. If you have a certain quantity (like space-time) as a variable, then your hypothesis/theory/law is said to be *dependant* on that quantity.
:::: hold on, we are talking about scientific laws, why you mess law with hypothesis now? Let me explain better. Scientific laws are defined by mathematical expressions. A mathematical expression may have space-time as a variable, but you cannot change the mathematical expression itself the next day, unless another expression defines the way this expression changes. At the end, and in order to be scientificaly correct, you always have to define a mathematical expression and claim that does not change and remains stable (for every space or time and especially for future time). This expression is acctually the scientific law that claims (as expression) to be space time position independant. Then experiment starts testing it. User:Agasicles 12:00, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::: Also, like I said earlier, laws are summaries of a (VERY LONG) sequence of observations. So you don't tend to change them around much once you've got them. Hypotheses are summaries of a very short sequence of observations though, and are actually more likely to be wrong than right ;-) And you can certainly play with your hypotheses to see what fits your observations better. Once you get a good fit, you can start to call it a theory :). User:Kim Bruning 11:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::: Scientific laws are summaries of a (RATHER SHORT) (about 2000 years or number_of_experiments_done* time_the_experiment_last) sequence of observations, in a RATHER SMALLER space (Solar system, earth or even our laboratory) that are expected to always remain the same in whatever space or time (thus independant of space-time). This is another definition of scientific law. I agree with that. User:Agasicles 11:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::::: That's starting to go somewhere, yup! For further elucidation (or perhaps confusion) see also: Lie-to-children. User:Kim Bruning 13:27, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::::: I am glad that your arguments are over. Actually you are the childs, who believes that the laws of physics are space-time position independant. The truth is that the laws of physics are space-time position dependant and in the same time cannot be bounded in a specific space-time coordinate. And this has been prooved, by the failure of your scientific method in the blackholes theory along with the discover of the inconstant constants. You stupid scientists, you have the mind of a moron. Go on, keep trying to take off your Columbia and Challenger space ships! User:Agasides 19:03, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::::::: You will never get enlightenment until you accepts the truth of dependant space-time. For this there is diseases and war and death. User:Agasides 19:13, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Agasicles: Your argument and your definition are ridiculous. See: scientific law. "Scientific law", "law of nature", and "physical law" are defined as a "generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature". Until you can change the definition at scientific law, in the Oxford English Dictionary, and in the scientific community, go away. User:Adraeus 02:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: Exactly. Scientific laws are childish generalisations of scientific thinking human minds, that are trying to convince themselves (and us) that our word has some "laws" that can be defined as independant of space or time, thus we can count on them and launch our Columbia or Challenger spaceships. Of course this poor scientific method that is supposed to lead us to the eternal law which can be applied anywhere a
Scientific Method
#REDIRECT Scientific method
Scientific method
A scientific method or process is considered fundamental to the science investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence. Scientists use observations, hypothesis and deductions to propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of theory. Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. If a prediction turns out to be correct, the theory survives. Any theory which is Cogency to make predictions can then be tested Reproducibility in this way. The method is commonly taken as the underlying logic of scientific practice. A scientific method is essentially an extremely cautious means of building a supportable, evidence-based understanding of our natural world. ==History== ''See also: History of science'' The development of methods for scientific inquiry is indivisible from the development of science. The Edwin Smith Papyrus (circa 1600s 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 16th century BC) contains incantations and foul applications created to cast out diseased demons and other superstition, there is evidence of traditional empiricism. 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. 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. 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 alchemy who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of Induction (philosophy). 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: :''"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."'' 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". Bacon's aphorism nineteen (XIX, of Book One) criticizes the tendency to leap to conclusions: :''"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."'' and advocates a more cautious approach :''"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."'' 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: :''"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.'' :''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.'' :''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.'' :''And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted."'' 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. Galileo Galilei combined quantitative experimentation and mathematical analysis, to permit the enunciation of general physical laws. Isaac Newton systematized these laws in the ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica '', which became a model that other sciences sought to emulate. His four "rules of reasoning" are: #''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: :''"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Accuracy and precision, than to explain all things."'' 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. 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 ''Falsifiability''. 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. In the past century, decision theory#Choice under uncertainty 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''. 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. ==Elements of a scientific method== The above is a hypothetico-deductive method, and includes observation in step one and four. Each step is subject to peer review for possible mistakes. These activities do not describe all that scientists do (#Scientific method and the practice of science) but apply mostly to experimental sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry). The steps above are often taught in education#fn_1. The Keystones of Science project, sponsored by the journal Science_(journal), has selected a number of scientific articles from that journal and annotated them, illustrating how different parts of each article embody the science method. [http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/scope/keystone1/ Here] is one example, showing how a group of scientists disproved a claim about lateral gene transfer in the human genome. ====''DNA/example''==== :Each step is illustrated by an example from the discovery of the structure of DNA: :#''#DNA/characterization(1)'' :#''#DNA/hypothesis(2)'' :#''#DNA/prediction(3)'' :#''#DNA/experiment(4)'' :The examples are continued in #Evaluation and iteration with ''#DNA/iteration''. ===Characterization=== A scientific method depends upon a careful characterization of the subject of the investigation. (The ''subject'' can also be called ''list of unsolved problems'' or the ''unknown''.) For example, Benjamin Franklin correctly characterized St. Elmo's fire as electrical in nature, but it has taken a long series of experiments and theory to establish this. While seeking the pertinent properties of the subject, this careful thought may also entail some definitions and observations; the observation often demands careful measurement and/or counting. The systematic, careful collection of measurements or counts of relevant quantities is often the critical difference between pseudo-sciences, such as alchemy, and a science, such as chemistry. Scientific measurements taken are usually tabulated, graphed, or mapped, and statistical manipulations, such as correlation and regression, performed on them. The measurements might be made in a controlled setting, such as a laboratory, or made on more or less inaccessible or unmanipulatable objects such as stars or human populations. The measurements often require specialized scientific instruments such as thermometers, spectroscopes, or voltmeters, and the progress of a scientific field is usually intimately tied to their invention and development. Measurements demand the use of ''operational definitions'' of relevant quantities. That is, a scientific quantity is described or defined by how it is measured, as opposed to some more vague, inexact or "idealized" definition. For example, electrical current, measured in Amperes, may be operationally defined in terms of the mass of silver deposited in a certain time on an electrode in an electrochemical device that is described in some detail. The operational definition of a thing often relies on comparisons with standards: the operational definition of "mass" ultimately relies on the use of an artifact, such as a certain kilogram of platinum kept in a laboratory in France. The scientific definition of a term sometimes differs substantially from their natural language usage. For example, mass and weight are often used interchangeably in common discourse, but have distinct meanings in physics. Scientific quantities are often characterized by their units of measure which can later be described in terms of conventional physical units when communicating the work. Measurements in scientific work are also usually accompanied by estimates of their uncertainty. The uncertainty is often estimated by making repeated measurements of the desired quantity. Uncertainties may also be calculated by consideration of the uncertainties of the individual underlying quantities that are used. Counts of things, such as the number of people in a nation at a particular time, may also have an uncertainty due to limitations of the method used. Counts may only represent a sample of desired quantities, with an uncertainty that depends upon the sampling method used and the number of samples taken. New theories sometimes arise upon realizing that certain terms had not previously been sufficiently clearly defined. For example, Albert Einstein first paper on relativity begins by defining simultaneity and the means for determining length. These ideas were skipped over by Isaac Newton with, "''I do not define time in physics#Galileo's water clock, space, place and motion, as being well known to all.''" Einstein's paper then demonstrates that they (viz., absolute time and length independent of motion) were approximations. Francis Crick cautions us that when characterizing a subject, however, it can be premature to define something when it remains ill-understood. In Crick's study of consciousness, he actually found it easier to study awareness in the visual system, rather than to study Free Will, for example. His cautionary example was the gene; the gene was much more poorly understood before Watson and Crick's pioneering discovery of the structure of DNA; it would have been counterproductive to spend much time on the definition of the gene, before them. * Francis Crick (1994), ''The Astonishing Hypothesis'' ISBN 0-684-19431-7 p.20 ====''The precession of Mercury''==== [[Image:Perihelion_precession.jpg|thumb|right|Precession of the perihelion (very exaggerated)]] The characterization phase can require extended and extensive study, even centuries. It took thousands of years of measurements, from the Chaldean, Indian, Persian Empiren, Greece, Arabic and European astronomers, to record the precession of the planet Earth. Newton was able to condense these measurements into consequences of his laws of motion. But the perihelion of the planet Mercury (planet)'s orbit exhibits a precession which is not fully explained by Newton's laws of motion. The observed difference for Mercury's precession, between Newtonian theory and relativistic theory (on the order of 42.5 arc-seconds per century), was one of the pieces of evidence for Einstein's characterization of his theory of General Relativity. This consequence (a difference in the values for this precession of 42.5 arc-seconds per century) was known only after the Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein field equation was published in 1916. ====''DNA/characterization(1)''==== :DNA#The history of DNA research of the structure of DNA is a classic example of #Elements of a scientific method: in 1950 it was known that genetic inheritance had a mathematical description, starting with the studies of Gregor Mendel. But the mechanism of the gene was unclear. Researchers in William Lawrence Bragg 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 which were painstakingly assembled over the course of 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. ''#DNA/hypothesis(2) '' ===Hypothesis development=== A hypothesis is a suggested description of the subject. Normally hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model. Sometimes, but not always, they can also be formulated as existential quantification, stating that some particular instance of the phenomenon being studied has some characteristic and causal explanations, which have the general form of Universal quantification, stating that every instance of the phenomenon has a particular characteristic. Scientists are free to use whatever they can — their own creativity, ideas from other fields, induction, Charles Peirce#Abductive reasoning (abduction), Bayesian inference, etc. — to imagine possible explanations for a phenomenon under study. 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. Michael Polanyi made such creativity the centrepiece of his discussion of methodology. In general scientists tend to look for theories that are "elegant" or "beautiful". In contrast to the usual English use of these terms, they here refer to a theory in accordance with the known facts, which is nevertheless relatively simple and easy to handle. If a model is mathematically too complicated, it is hard to deduce any #Prediction from the hypothesis ====''DNA/hypothesis(2)''==== :For example, in the race to determine the structure of DNA, Francis Crick and James Watson hypothesized that this molecule had a helical structure: two intertwined spirals. But Linus Pauling was about to embark on serious study of the molecule; he was hypothesizing a triple helix. ''#DNA/characterization(1)|#DNA/prediction(3)'' ===Prediction from the hypothesis=== Any useful hypothesis will enable predictions, by deductive reasoning. It might predict the outcome of an experiment in a laboratory setting or the observation of a phenomenon in nature. The prediction can also be statistical and only talk about probabilities. It is essential that the outcome be currently unknown. Only in this case does the eventuation increase the probability that the hypothesis be true. If the outcome is already known, it's called a consequence and should have already been considered while #Hypothesis development. If the predictions are not accessible by observation or experience, the hypothesis is not yet useful for the method, and must wait for others who might come afterward, and perhaps rekindle its line of reasoning. For example, a new technology or theory might make the necessary experiments feasible. ====''Halley's comet''==== The classic example was Edmund Halley's prediction of the year of return of Halley's comet which returned after his death. ====''General Relativity''==== gravitational_lensing">Image:Gravitational lens-full.jpg|right|thumb|200px|gravitational lensing Einstein's theory of General Relativity makes several specific predictions about the observable structure of space-time, such as a prediction that light bends in a gravitational field and that the amount of bending depends in a precise way on the strength of that gravitational field. Arthur Eddington's observations made during a 1919 solar eclipse supported General Relativity rather than Newtonian gravitation. ====''DNA/prediction(3)''==== :When Watson and Crick hypothesized that DNA was a double helix, Francis Crick predicted that a X-ray diffraction image of DNA would show an X-shape. ''#DNA/characterization(1) | #DNA/experiment(4)'' ===Experiment=== Once a prediction is made, it can be tested in an experiment. If the test results contradict the prediction, then the hypothesis under test is incorrect or incomplete and requires either revision or abandonment. If the results confirm the prediction, then the hypothesis is more likely to be correct but might still be wrong and is subject to #Evaluation and iteration Depending on the prediction the experiment can have different shapes. It could be a classical experiment in a laboratory setting, a double-blind study or an archeological excavation. Even taking a plane from New York to Paris is an experiment which tests the aerodynamics hypotheses used for constructing the plane. Scientists assume an attitude of openness and accountability on the part of those conducting an experiment. Detailed recordkeeping is essential, to aid in recording and reporting on the experimental results, and providing evidence of the effectiveness and integrity of the procedure. They will also assist in reproducing the experimental results. This tradition can be seen in the work of Hipparchus (astronomer), when determining a value for the precession of the Earth over 2100 years ago, and 1000 years before Al-Batani. ====''DNA/experiment(4)''==== :When James Watson was sent to investigate what Rosalind Franklin had found in her X-ray diffraction images of DNA, he saw the [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/ X-shape] which Crick had predicted for a helical structure. ''#DNA/characterization(1) | #DNA/iteration'' ==Evaluation and iteration== ===Testing and improvement=== The scientific process is iterative. At any stage it is possible that some consideration will lead the scientist to repeat an earlier part of the process. Failure to develop an interesting hypothesis may lead a scientist to re-define the subject they are considering. Failure of a hypothesis to produce interesting and testable predictions may lead to reconsideration of the hypothesis or of the definition of the subject. Failure of the experiment to produce interesting results may lead the scientist to reconsidering the experimental method, the hypothesis or the definition of the subject. Other scientists may start their own research and enter the process at any stage. They might adopt the characterization and formulate their own hypothesis, or they might adopt the hypothesis and deduce their own predictions. Often the experiment is not done by the person who made the prediction and the characterization is based on experiments done by someone else. Published results of experiments can also serve as a hypothesis predicting their own reproducibility. ====Light==== Light had long been supposed to be made of particles. Isaac Newton, and before him many of the Classical Greeks, was convinced it was so, but his light-is-particles account was overturned by evidence in favor of a wave theory of light suggested most notably in the early 1800s by Thomas Young (scientist), an English physician. Light as waves neatly explained the observed diffraction and interference of light when, to the contrary, the light-as-a-particle theory did not. The wave interpretation of light was widely held to be unassailably correct for most of the 19th century. Around the turn of the century, however, observations were made that a wave theory of light could not explain. This new set of observations could be accounted for by Max Planck's quantum theory (including the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion—both from Albert Einstein), but not by a wave theory of light, nor by a particle theory. ====''DNA/iteration''==== : Watson was able to deduce the essential structure of DNA by concrete modelling DNA#Discovery of the structure of DNA of the nucleotides which comprise it. He was guided by the bond lengths which had been deduced by Linus Pauling. In all of this, the nature of the chemical bond had been characterized by the theory of quantum mechanics. After James Watson and Francis Crick's breakthrough discovery, an entire field of study was legitimized: molecular biology. ''#DNA/characterization(1)'' ===Verification=== [[Image:Ball Lightning.jpg|thumb|right|200px|ball lightning]] Science is a social enterprise, and scientific work will become accepted by the community only if they can be verified. Crucially, experimental and theoretical results must be reproduced by others within the science community. Researchers have given their lives for this vision; Georg Wilhelm Richmann was killed by ball lightning to his forehead (1753) when attempting to replicate the 1752 kite experiment of Benjamin Franklin. ==Scope and goals== The scientific method can be applied to anything within the range of our experiences. As long as something has an impact on our lives we can formulate theories and try to predict, what this impact might be. The impact itself is an experiment, testing whether our theory was right. It can also be applied, starting with #Experiment or #Prediction from the hypothesis, to theories coming from different sources than the scientific method itself, as long as those make prediction, or it is possible to deduce some. People use this method all the time. They have theories about devices and make predictions how those will react to their actions. If a device does not work as expected the experiment disproves their theory. If they adjust their theory they are applying the scientific method, if they nevertheless stick to their theory they don't. The scientific method doesn't aim at giving an ultimate answer. It's iterative and recursive nature implies, that it will never come to an end. So any answer it gives is a provisional answer. Hence it can't prove or verify anything in a strong sense. But if a theory passed many experimental tests without being disproved, it is considered superior to any theory, which has not yet been put to a test. ==Scientific community== Often the scientific method is not employed by a single person, but several people cooperate. In such a case we are talking about a scientific community. Various techniques have been developed to ensure the integrity of the scientific method within such an environment. ===Peer review evaluation=== Scientific journals use a process of ''peer review'', in which scientists' manuscripts are submitted by editors of scientific journals to (usually one to three) fellow (usually anonymous) scientists familiar with the field for evaluation. The referees may or may not recommend publication, publication with suggested modifications, or, sometimes, publication in another journal. This serves to keep the scientific literature free of unscientific or crackpot work, helps to cut down on obvious errors, and generally otherwise improve the quality of the scientific literature. Work announced in the popular press before going through this process is generally frowned upon. Sometimes peer review inhibits the circulation of unorthodox work, and at other times may be too permissive. The peer review process is not always successful, but has been very widely adopted by the scientific community. ===Reproduction and Recordkeeping=== Sometimes experimentators are making systematic errors during their experiments or even forge the results. Hence scientists try to reproduce important experiments or use different setups for testing the same prediction. Experimentators are therefore expected to make detailed records of their experiments, which provides evidence of the effectiveness and integrity of the procedure and assists in reproduction. Such records can also help other scientists conceiving new experiments base on an old one and engineers searching for an application of the phenomenon. ==Philosophical issues== The study of a scientific method is distinct from the practice of science and is more a part of the philosophy of science, history of science and sociology of science of science than of science. While such studies have limited direct impact on day-to-day scientific practice, they have a vital role in justifying and defending the scientific approach. We find ourselves in a world that is not directly understandable. We find that we sometimes disagree with others as to the fact of the things we see in the world around us, and we find that there are things in the world that sometimes are at odds with our present understanding. The scientific method attempts to provide a way in which we can reach agreement and understanding. A perfect scientific method would work in such a way that rationality application of the method would always result in agreement and understanding; in effect a perfect method would not leave any room for rational agents to disagree. Philosophers of science have long sought such a method. The material presented below is intended to show that, as with all Philosophy topics, the search has been neither straightforward nor simple. ===Theory-dependence of observation=== A scientific method depends on observation, in defining the subject under investigation and in performing experiments. Observation involves philosophy of perception , and so is a cognitive process. That is, one does not make an observation passively, but is actively involved in distinguishing the thing being observed from surrounding sensory data. Therefore, observations depend on some underlying understanding of the way in which the world functions, and that understanding may influence what is perceived, noticed, or deemed worthy of consideration. (See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for an early version of this understanding of the impact of cultural artifacts on our perceptions of the world.) Empirical observation is supposedly used to determine the acceptability of some hypothesis within a theory. When someone claims to have made an observation, it is reasonable to ask them to justify their claim. Such a justification must make reference to the theory - operational definitions and hypotheses - in which the observation is embedded. That is, the observation is a component of the theory that also contains the hypothesis it either verifies or falsifies. But this means that the observation cannot serve as a neutral arbiter between competing hypotheses. Observation could only do this "neutrally" if it were independent of the theory. Thomas Kuhn denied that it is ever possible to isolate the theory being tested from the influence of the theory in which the observations are grounded. He argued that observations always rely on a specific paradigm, and that it is not possible to evaluate competing paradigms independently. By "paradigm" he meant, essentially, a logically consistent "portrait" of the world, one that involves no logical contradictions. More than one such logically consistent construct can each paint a usable likeness of the world, but it is pointless to pit them against each other, theory against theory. Neither is a standard by which the other can be judged. Instead, the question is which "portrait" is judged by some set of people to promise the most in terms of “puzzle solving”. For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes. The individual's choice between paradigms involves setting two or more “portraits" against the world and deciding which likeness is most promising. In the case of a general acceptance of one paradigm or another, Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists. Acceptance or rejection of some paradigm is, he argued, more a social than a logical process. That observation is embedded in theory does not mean that observations are irrelevant to science. Scientific understanding derives from observation, but the acceptance of scientific statements is dependent on the related theoretical background or paradigm as well as on observation. Coherentism and scepticism offer alternatives to foundationalism for dealing with the difficulty of grounding scientific theories in something more than observations. ===Indeterminacy of theory under empirical testing=== The W. V. Quine-Pierre Duhem thesis points out that any theory can be made compatible with any empirical observation by the addition of suitable ad hoc hypotheses. This is analogous to the way in which an infinite number of curves can be drawn through any set of data points on a graph. This thesis was accepted by Karl Popper, leading him to reject Falsifiability#Naive_Falsification in favour of 'survival of the fittest', or most falsifiable, of scientific theories. In Popper's view, any hypothesis that does not make testable predictions is simply not science. Such a hypothesis may be useful or valuable, but it cannot be said to be science. Confirmation holism, developed by W. V. Quine, states that empirical data is not sufficient to make a judgement between theories. A theory can always be made to fit with the available empirical data. That empirical evidence does not serve to determine between alternate theories does not imply that all theories are of equal value. Rather than pretending to use a universally applicable methodological principle, the scientist is making a personal choice when she chooses some particular theory over another. One result of this is that specialists in the philosophy of science stress the requirement that observations made for the purposes of science be restricted to ''intersubjective'' objects. That is, science is restricted to those areas where there is general agreement on the nature of the observations involved. It is comparatively easy to agree on observations of physical phenomena, harder for them to agree on observations of social or mental phenomena, and difficult in the extreme to reach agreement on matters of theology or ethics. ===Demarcation=== Scientific Method is touted as one way of determining which disciplines are scientific and which are not. Those which follow a scientific method might be considered sciences; those that do not are not. That is, method might be used as the Demarcation problem between science and non-science. If it is not possible to articulate a definitive method, then it may also not be possible to articulate a definitive distinction between science and non-science, between science and pseudo-science, and between scientists and non-scientists. Feyerabend denies there is a scientific method, and in his book Against Method argues that scientific progress is not the result of the application of any particular method. In essence, he says that ''anything goes''. ===Science as a communal activity=== In his book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' Kuhn argues that the process of observation and evaluation take place within a paradigm. 'A paradigm is what the members of a community of scientists share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm' (postscript, part 1). On this account, science can be done only as a part of a community, and is inherently a communal activity. For Kuhn the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is in the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there is insufficient difference between social practices in science and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. It is apparent that social factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but that they do not serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. Furthermore, although on this account science is socially constructed, it does not follow that reality is a social construct. Kuhn’s ideas are equally applicable to both realist and anti-realist ontologies. The definition of a scientific method is debatable and contended. positivism, empiricism, and falsifiability theories are unable to satisfy their aim of giving a definitive account of the logic of science. The sociology of science may be incapable of accounting for the success of the scientific enterprise. ===Scientific thought=== Carl Sagan, in his book ''The Demon-Haunted World'', argues that we should use a scientific method as a tool for Scientific skepticism. When we are presented with a new concept — ESP, for example — we should test the claims of its proponents against experiment ourselves (or gather evidence from as many sources as possible), and reject the theory if the evidence shows its claims to be false. Sagan was particularly interested in those movements which misrepresent science - pseudoscience or quackery. ==Scientific method and the practice of science== The primary constraints on science are: *Publication, i.e. Peer review *Resources (mostly, funding) It has not always been like this: in the old days of the "gentleman scientist" funding (and to a lesser extent publication) were far weaker constraints. Both of these constraints indirectly bring in a scientific method — work that too obviously violates the constraints will be difficult to publish and difficult to get funded. Journals do not require submitted papers to conform to anything more specific than "good scientific practice" and this is mostly enforced by peer review. Originality, importance and interest are more important - see for example the [http://www.nature.com/nature/submit/get_published/index.html author guidelines] for ''Nature (journal)''. Criticisms (see Critical theory) of these restraints are that they are so nebulous in definition (e.g. "good scientific practice") and open to ideological, or even political, manipulation apart from a rigorous practice of a scientific method, that they often serve to censor rather than promote scientific discovery. Apparent censorship through refusal to publish ideas unpopular with mainstream scientists (unpopular because of ideological reasons and/or because they seem to contradict long held scientific theories) has soured the popular perception of scientists as being neutral or seekers of truth and often denigrated popular perception of science as a whole. ==Notes== #fn_1_backTeachers using inquiry education as a teaching method sometimes teach a slightly modified version of a scientific method in which an inquiry, a "Question", is substituted for the step one of a scientific method: "Characterization, Observation, Definition, etc. ". ==Historical references to scientific method== * William Stanley Jevons, 1874, 1877. ''The Principles of Science'', 786pp., index. Reprinted by Dover, 1958, with a forward by Ernst Nagel. ==External links== *[http://www.freeinquiry.com/intro-to-sci.html An Introduction to Science: Scientific Thinking and a scientific method] by Steven D. Schafersman. *[http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html Introduction to a scientific method] *[http://dharma-haven.org/science/myth-of-scientific-method.htm The Myth of a scientific method] by Dr. Terry Halwes *[http://religiousbook.net/Lectures/Sciense_and_religion.html Scientific Method in Religious Practice] *[http://www.galilean-library.org/theory.html Theory-ladenness] by Paul Newall at The Galilean Library *[http://www.galilean-library.org/academy/viewtopic.php?t=62 Lakatos' Lectures on Scientific Method], discussed at The Academy forum Scientific method simple:Scientific method th:ระเบียบวิธีทางวิทยาศาสตร์ zh-cn:科学方法
Scientific method
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| /Archive 10 | /Archive 11 | /Archive 12 |
- [http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scimeth.htm D. Simanek, physicist]
- [http://www.av8n.com/physics/scientific-methods.htm J. Denker, physicist]
- [http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/bridgman.htm P. Bridgman, physicist]
- [http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html R. Feynman, physicist]
- [http://amasci.com/miscon/myths10.html W. McComas]
- [http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-06436-4.html H. Baur, chemist]