Wendee Holtcamp wrote:
>
> George wrote
>
> > There is no "official" scientific method. In fact, there is no
> single
> >scientific method.
>
> Well I understand that there are indeed different ways of doing
> science and that textbooks have overused the traditional scientific
> method dogma, but there was indeed (or at least it has been reportted)
> a history of the development of the specific method for keeping bias
> out of science:
Science didn't just suddenly come into being in the 16th century with the
discovery or invention of a new method - there was some continuity with the work of
medieval thinkers. (The notion that everything before Copernicus was the "dark ages"
belongs to the antiquated Draper-White school of history of science-religion warfare.)
The fundamental elements of science are
a) observation of the world - including controlled experiment, &
b) thinking about the world- with some emphasis on mathematics,
but not in any special order. You can start with the observations (Heisenberg) or a
theory (Schroedinger) to get to quantum mechanics.
But actually there's a third element - knowing what others have learned before
you. Otherwise budding scientist would have to start at square 1 & we'd never get past
knowing that the sun rises in the east. _But_ attaching too much authority to the past
is stultifying, & that was one of the things that people like Copernicus & Galileo had
to get past. Aristotle & Galen weren't stupid & they weren't entirely wrong, but people
had to learn that they weren't right just because they were Aristotle & Galen. That's a
great oversimplification of the factors giving rise to _modern_ science, but one such
factor was the willingness to subject well-established ideas to new examination.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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