Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, not the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of ...
Scientific method – body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable , empirical , reproducible , measurable evidence , and subject to the laws of reasoning .
Discovery science places an emphasis on 'basic' discovery, which can fundamentally change the status quo. For example, in the early years of water resources research, the use of discovery science was demonstrated by seeking to elucidate phenomena that was, until that point, unexplained.
Robert Hooke, using a microscope, observes cells (1665).; Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovers microorganisms (1674–1676).; James Lind, publishes 'A Treatise of the Scurvy' which describes a controlled shipboard experiment using two identical populations but with only one variable, the consumption of citrus fruit (1753).
Basic research advances fundamental knowledge about the world. It focuses on creating and refuting or supporting theories that explain observed phenomena. Pure research is the source of most new scientific ideas and ways of thinking about the world.
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory".
The philosopher Wesley C. Salmon described scientific inquiry: The search for scientific knowledge ends far back into antiquity. At some point in the past, at least by the time of Aristotle, philosophers recognized that a fundamental distinction should be drawn between two kinds of scientific knowledge—roughly, knowledge that and knowledge why.
The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science, and thus a first formulation of a modern scientific method. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum (1620), or 'New Method', to replace the old methods put forward in Aristotle 's Organon .