preview

Scientific Method Essay

Decent Essays

Scientific Method

Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.) was the first to suggest a single material substratum for the universe--namely water or moisture. His cosmology proposes that all objects in the universe are composed of water. His choice of water as the component building block of all matter may have been due to the apparent motion of bodies of water and the conversion of water to vapor and back.

Anaximander of Miletus (610-545 B.C.) was the foremost student of Thales. He denied Thales claim that water was the basic matter of the universe, stating instead that the world was derived from apeiron (meaning "unlimited"). The state of apeiron preceeded the separation into other qualities, such as hot and cold or wet and dry , and thus …show more content…

Each generation of scientists takes the knowledge, theories and cosmologies of the generations of scientists who came before, building and expanding on them in light of new developments and knowledge. Does the fact that a theory of our scientific forefathers, which had been universally accepted, is proven incorrect invalidate their efforts? I donÕt believe so, but Sir Karl Popper, in Science: Conjectures and Refutations, would seem to argue otherwise when he states that "the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability."

The modern scientific method is composed of several steps: observation, hypothesis, experimentation and verification. On observation of a phenomenon a scientist will attempt to interpret the phenomenon is light of current scientific knowledge (theory). The scientist will then attempt to develop experiments in which to determine the validity of the theory. Through this experimentation the theory will either be validated or disproved. Popper states that any experiment must be a serious attempt to disprove or invalidate the theory being tested, and further, that any theory so disproven cannot be considered science.

Poppers views descend from the fact that the physical laws, whether known or as yet undiscovered, are immutable. Science, though, is the discipline concerned with the search for these unchanging physical laws. The history of science is a progression of insights and revelations based on the

Get Access