Pros And Cons For And Against The Scientific Method

Only from the accumulation of observations can patterns and predictions be drawn. These all show ways science is applied to the world, through the scientific method web shown in chapter one of “Biology: The

The development of the scientific method in the late 1500’s to the early 1600’s was a crucial stepping-stone in the science community. The scientific method is based upon observations, hypotheses and experimentation. The concept is rather simple, and can be applied to many areas of study. Once an observation is made, the observer can make a hypothesis as to why that phenomenon occurs and can then design an experiment to prove whether or not that hypotheses is valid. Although the scientific method has been extremely useful in the discovery of various things from usages of medications to studying animal behavior, there are still those who question the usage of this tool. These critics claim that since

The scientific method continues to be misrepresented in public schools all over the world. Students are being taught that there is a beginning and an end to the scientific method, and that everything in between is protocol and must be followed chronologically. “Ask a question, do some research, come up with a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, understand your data, make your conclusion!” a grade six science teacher will tell their students. “It’ll be on your quiz!”. However, what those students are not being taught is that the scientific method has never been, and will never be a linear process. Scientists constantly revisit different steps of the process in order to better understand the subject matter; sometimes it can take many years to

Induction is a form of reasoning where the premises support the conclusion, but do not confirm that the conclusion is true. To justify induction, we are required to justify that we can infer that experiences we have never experienced will resemble those that we have experienced. Making inductive inferences is necessary for everyday life as well as in science. It is rational to rely on inductive arguments in everyday life for claims such as “the sun will rise tomorrow.” But inductive arguments require that nature is uniform. For example, tomorrow the laws of physics will continue to work the same as how they have in the past, so the world will continue spinning and the sun will rise. This perceived uniformity (the principle of uniformity of nature) allows claims like the one previously outlined to be easily understood. Although inductive arguments are useful, whether or not they can be justified is a topic of debate. In James Van Cleve’s “Reliability, Justification and the Problem of Induction,” he uses an inductive argument to attempt to justify induction. In his justification he claims that his method of argument is not circular. I argue that his reasoning is problematic because an inductive argument is not able to justify induction, mainly because inductive arguments presuppose the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

The Scientific Method is the standardized procedure that scientists are supposed to follow when conducting experiments, in order to try to construct a reliable, consistent, and non-arbitrary representation of our surroundings. To follow the Scientific Method is to stick very tightly to a order of experimentation. First, the scientist must observe the phenomenon of interest. Next, the scientist must propose a hypothesis, or idea in which the experiments will be based around. Then, through repeated experimentation, the hypothesis can either be proven false or become a theory. If the hypothesis is proven to be false, the scientist must reformulate his or her ideas and come up with another hypothesis, and the experimentation begins again. This

What is Science? When it comes to the word ‘science’ most of the people have some kind of knowledge about science or when they think of it there is some kind of image related to it, a theory, scientific words or scientific research (Beyond Conservation, n.d.). Many different sorts of ideas float into an individual’s mind. Every individual has a different perception about science and how he/she perceives it. It illustrates that each person can identify science in some form. It indicates that the ‘science’ plays a vital role in our everyday lives (Lederman & Tobin, 2002). It seems that everyone can identify science but cannot differentiate it correctly from pseudo-science and non-science (Park, 1986). This essay will address the difference between science, non-science and pseudo-science. Then it will discuss possible responses to the question that what should we do when there is a clash between scientific explanation and non-scientific explanation. Then it will present a brief examination about the correct non-scientific explanation.

It was David Hume that brought forth the problem of induction. Due to his profound critique, philosophers have argued the subject of induction for centuries. Considering the fact that our experiences of the world cannot confirm or disprove general or universal claims, but only particular facts. For this reason, empiricism requires a method to change from knowledge of a specific group of objects, to knowledge of global and general connection. Such a procedure is called

Science is the knowledge gained by a systematic study, knowledge which then becomes facts or principles. In the systematic study; the first step is observation, the second step hypothesis, the third step experimentation to test the hypothesis, and lastly the conclusion whether or not the hypothesis holds true. These steps have been ingrained into every student of science, as the basic pathway to scientific discovery. This pathway holds not decision as to good or evil intention of the experiment. Though, there are always repercussions of scientific experiments. They range from the most simplistic realizations of the difference between acid and water to the principle that Earth is not the center of

The following essay aims to discuss the inconsistencies between the inductivist and Popper’s points of view of science rationality of science in light of claims that the scientific method is inductive yet an inductive method is no. I think is rational to say that inductivist view of science has significant contradiction that Popper’s view solves. To support Popper’s view my argument will introduce the inductivist and falsificationsist views and I will focus in showing the issues of considered science as objective, scientific knowledge as proven and nature as uniform as well as the differences between inductivism and falsificationism to the creation of hypothesis.

Although it is irrefutable that both Aristotle and Isaac Newton are great scientists and have made phenomenal contributions to scientific development, their scientific methods vary to a large extent. With reference to Scientific Method in Practice, Aristotle investigated the world by using inductions from observations to infer general principles and deductions from those principles to conduct further observational research (Gauch, 2003), while in Isaac Newton's Scientific Method, the author describes Newton’s method as aiming to turn theoretical questions into ones which can be explained by mathematical ideas and measurement from phenomena, and to establish that propositions inferred from phenomena are provisionally guides to further research

While induction is only one of the five parts of the inductivist account of science, it is one of the most important steps. Induction is the process by which scientists make a leap of thought from observation to theory, and if induction has flaws, then the new theory must unquestionably contain flaws. Regardless of these errors, a scientist, according to an inductivist philosopher, will still accept a particular scientific theory if it can be validly induced from factual observation and experiment.

Karl Popper is commonly regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th Century. He is well known for his rejection of the inductivist viewpoint of the scientific method, in which one uses observation to propose a law to generalize an observed pattern, and later confirm that law through more observation. Popper states that “induction cannot be logically justified” (Popper 14). Inductivism relies on the process of inductive reasoning which is a logical process in which multiple premises, all thought to be true and found to be true most of the time, are combined to obtain a conclusion and in many cases formulate a law or theory. Popper rejected the inductivist viewpoint in favor of a theory called empirical falsification which holds that a theory can never be proven, but it can be falsified, and therefore it can and needs to be scrutinized through experimentation.

In the 17th century Francis Bacon introduced induction as the new method for producing scientific theories. However inductive reasoning is riddled with problems that make it unsatisfactory for demarcating science. Hume’s problem of induction

Human beings are inherently flawed creatures. Through faults in reason and sense perception we interpret the world not as it truly is. Both the Human and Natural Sciences are tools to understand the world and are a lens in which to comprehend ideas not readily available to us purely through common sense logic and sense perception. The implications made in the title are that the inductive scientific method, when removed from error and bias, provides unequivocal and unobjectionable objective truth. The

This book, ‘What is this Thing called Science?’ is assigned to write a review on the third edition which was published in the year 1999, 1st February by University of Queensland Press. This book is reflects up to date with day today’s contemporary trend and gives a basic introduction on the philosophy of science. This is a very comprehensive book explaining the nature of science and its historical development. It is very informative and a necessary reference when attempting to understand the how science has evolved throughout time. The book is also well organized, and each chapter is concluded with suggestions for further reading. This book is actually a review on the philosophy of science.