Study Guide: The Scientific Method
Choosing What To Believe
We live in a complex world, a nd it’s not easy to know what is absolutely true. History is filled with examplpes of ideas that some people believed that were in fact not even close to the truth. We are influenced by unconscious assumptions, anecdotal stories, wishful thinking, clever arguments, well-phrased half-truths, appeals to authority, and “big lies” repeated too often. The scientific method is one way to try to discover some truth within the confusion. But it’s important to understand how the method works. The scientific method does not automatically make prejudice, bias and confusion disappear. We still need to do our own honest and careful thinking. Statements such as “scientists say”, “science has proven”, or “three out of four scientists believe” should be viewed with skepticism. Although they speak about scientists, they are not actually scientific statements. In science, only the evidence matters.
Specialization
If someone says, “three out of four scientists believe that global warming is not caused by human activity,” we need to do some research. We need to know the qualifications and areas of expertise for each scientist. In this case, we might prefer to hear from meteorologists who have devoted their lives to the study of climate and weather. Specialization, (the practice of studying one subject very deeply), does not automatically make someone correct, but it does usually reduce our level of ignorance (ignoring facts) in specific situations.
Steps in the Scientific Method
The scientific method is critical to the development of scientific theories. These theories are then used to try to explain the empirical (experiential, observable, measurable) world.
- Surprise and Wonder: A scientist has a surprising or interesting experience and begins to wonder about it.
- Questions: The scientist starts asking questions…
- What just happened?
- Why did that happen?
- Will it happen again?
- Does it always happen when that other thing happens?
- Does it only happen when that other thing happens?
- Will it happen if I try this…
- Hypothesis: The scientist develops an hypothesis in an attempt to find answers to her questions.
- Experimentation: The scientist develop experiments to test if the hypothesis is true or not. As she learns more, she develops new questions, refines her hypothesis, and creates more helpful experiments.
- Analysis and Conclusion: Sometimes the experiments show that the hypothesis was a reasonable explanation. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, something may be learned.
- Publication and Independent Verification: When the scientist believe she has learned something worth reporting to the wider scientific community, she writes a research paper, which includes the hypothesis, experimental methods, data, observations, and conclusions. The research report must be honest, factual, and mathematically exact so that others can repeat the experiments and independently verify the results.
- Scientific Acceptance: When many scientists have duplicated the experiment and confirmed that the results support the conclusion, the discovery may be added to humanity’s ever-growing collection of scientific knowledge.
Scientific Laws vs. Theories
What is the difference between a theory and a law? A law describes what always happens in certain conditions. For example, “On Earth, the sun always rises in the east.” A theory describes why something always happens in certain conditions. For example, “The sun appears to rise in the east because the planet Earth is rotating toward the east.”
Universal Laws
Very rarely, someone makes a discovery so fundamental to our understanding of reality that we call it a Universal Law. Here are several of the greatest universal laws:
- Newton’s first law of motion
- Newton’s second law of motion
- Newton’s law of universal gravitation
- The law of conservation of mass
- The law of conservation of energy
- The law of conservation of momentum
Here is one person’s list of the most important scientific theories and laws that everyone should know.
- Big Bang Theory
- Hubble’s Law of Cosmic Expansion
- Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion
- Universal Law of Gravitation
- Newton’s Laws of Motion
- Laws of Thermodynamics
- Archimedes’ Buoyancy Principle
- Evolution and Natural Selection
- Theory of General Relativity
- Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
Exploring the Unknown
Real science has more to say about what is not known than about what is known. For example, although physics is the study of all physical phenomenon, there are only a few scientific laws that physicists are certain must be true. Everything else is conjecture and open to new interpretations.
The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
Alfred North Whitehead was a brilliant philosopher. His books are not easy reading—and so are too rarely read, and even less often understood. One of his easier to understand ideas is the Fallacy fo Misplaced Concreteness.
Here are a few quotes from Alfred North Whitehead:
“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”
"[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness", which is the error of mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality."
“While the aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations for complex facts, we can fall into the error of thinking that facts are simple because simplicity is the goal.”
“The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’”
“In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.”
“Error is the price we pay for progress.”
Main Lesson Book Page
Include:
- Title: “The Scientific Method”
- Summary: (1 – 3 paragraphs) What is it? Why do we use it? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
- **Steps:**Show the steps, from Surprise to Scientific Law
- Illustration: At least one
Example Summary
The Scientific Method is a set of steps that must be followed to conclusively prove if an ideas if true or false. The method begins with surprise and wonder, and ends with scientific knowledge. One strength of the method is that it helps us identify when our ideas are wrong. Peer review is an important step in helping scientists identify errors. The Scientific Method has enabled humanity to make rapid technological progress.
Steps
- Surprise and Wonder: Observe the obvious, which is not as easy as it sounds.
- Question: Develop new ideas and questions.
- Hypothesis: Develop an empirical statement (experiential, observable, testable).
- Experiment: Conduct experiments to test the hypothesis. (Repeat and refine as needed.)
- Conclusion: Determine if the experiments prove the hypothesis “true” or “false”.
- Publish: Share the work with the scientific community. Conclusions are often written in the language of math, such as $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$.
- Peer Review: The scientific community repeats the experiment, and determines if the conclusion logically follow from the experimental evidence.
- Scientific Facts: If a large consensus of the scientific community accepts the conclusion, it can becomes an accepted scientific fact.
- Scientific Laws: If the conclusion is thought to be universally true, it can become a Scientific Law. Scientists are careful to only call something a law if they are very sure that it is always true.