Space L Clottey
The Scientific Method
The scientific method is a way of systematically finding truth and answers from reality. The process involves:
- Coming up with a hypothesis
- Designing ways to test the hypothesis
- Performing the tests
- Making observations
- Repeat
FOR EXAMPLE:
- Hypothesis -> “I have a pen in my pocket”
- Designing ways to test -> “If I have a pen in my pocket, then if I reach into my pocket I will feel a long, hard rod.”
- Performing the test -> Reach into pocket
- Obvservation -> Feel long hard rod
- Conclusion -> You have a pen in your pocket.
How else would you have tested? The hardest thing with arguing with people about the value of the scientific method is that they don’t realise that that’s the way they’re generating knowledge for themselves anyway. In one particular argument, they in earnest did not let me even define it so I could not explain it at all.
The scientific method is most important when you have to generate the knowledge yourself. For all of human history, there have been people who have been at the very edge of all of humanities knowledge and have been tasked with finding out something knew. If you’re great claim to the uselessness of the scientific method is that you can simply look things up on google, then what do you expect these people to do? Do you think in 18-whatever Newton could have googled “Why do objects fall?” Or even gone to the library? NO!
Trust
Being able to look things up all the time is a privilege of the information age and this gives you the impression that humans are omniscient! You have never been let down before by your teacher, not truly, so you do not realise that your teacher is a human and your teacher gets knowledge from somewhere and, when you need to, there is absolutely nothing wrong with just skipping the teacher bit and using the way your teacher gets knowledge and use it yourself!
The scientific method negates the need for trust in authority because you can just look at the experiments yourself – that’s why scientists have to write out all the methodology. So that anyone can analyse and think “Hey wait! They didn’t use a placebo!” Or “Hey wait! They used a really small sample size!”
Learning what it takes to make a good scientific experiment is exponentially less work than learning how to analyse science, and to verify the scientific method OR your ability to analyse the scientific method is to make a prediction then see h
If you wish to insist yourself too stupid to generate any knowledge for yourself, go ahead. But I don’t have that luxury, facing mysteries which my doctor can’t help with, seeking knowledge no teacher in my radius has or will distil for me.
Only when you really have nothingness above will you realise your need to be able to derive and verify knowledge for yourself, and if in your training ground now you latch on to the sofa for each step you take, then when the sofa is taken away you will fall.
Points
- The scientific method is the only way to test things
- The scientific method negates the need for trust in authority
- The scientific method