The scientific method usually refers to either a series or a collection of processes that are considered characteristic of scientific investigation and of the acquisition of new scientific knowledge.
Philosophers, historians and sociologists have found many ways to describe the scientific process. Often when someone describes how they think science is done, they are describing how they think science may be best or most reliably done. As a result, discussions of scientific method are frequently partisan. Indeed, there are perhaps as many methods of doing science as there are methodologists.
The enunciation of a scientific method by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation and the need for independent verification. This view, itself inspired by an arab alchemical tradition not endorsed by christian ecclesiastical authority, led to Francis Bacon (in 1620 with the New Organon) laying down some methods for identifying causation between phenomena. With these articulations, unfounded speculation and analogical arguments began to be replaced by consistent and logical methods of investigation.
It is common to speak as if a single approach of this type were how scientists operate literally and all the time. Most historians, philosophers and sociologists regard this perspective as naïve, and view the actual progress of science as more complicated and haphazard. The actual course of scientific progress is inseparable from the politics and culture of science; a single, formal process cannot suffice either to explain or prescribe scientific progress.
The question of how science operates is important well beyond the academic community. In the judicial system and in policy debates, for example, a study's deviation from accepted scientific practice is grounds to reject it as "junk science." Whether strictly formularizable or not, science represents a standard of proficiency and reliability, and this is due at least in part to the way scientists work.
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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