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Re: scientific method(s)



At 01:55 PM 2/27/00 -0600, Glenn A. Carlson wrote in part:
>
The scientific method is a process by which we describe the true
nature of the universe (whatever "true" means, and whatever "universe"
means) through a process of observation, statement of a falsifiable
hypothesis, deductive testing of the hypothesis by experimentation,
etc.

The process just described is "a" process. It's certainly not exclusively
"the" process by which we learn what's going on in the universe.

As for mathematics, it is distinguished from science in that it does
not follow the scientific method.

IF (big IF) it makes sense to distinguish math from science, that's not a
sounds basis for the distinction.

At 07:38 AM 2/26/00 -0600, Jack Uretsky wrote:
I think that I am a working scientist. What, pray tell, is the
"scientific method"?

I agree with the point behind Jack's rhetorical question.

Let me be less subtle than Jack: I object to the term "the scientific
method" because it implies that there is only one method that scientists
use. In fact we have oodles of different methods. Hypothesis testing is
one of them. It tends to be useful relatively late in the game, when we
mostly know what is going on.

When Galileo built his telescope, he was not testing the hypothesis that
there were moons around Jupiter. When Kamerling Onnes decided to measure
some real cold metal, he wasn't testing a hypothesis about
superconductivity. Mendeleev spend many years playing with funny-colored
stinky precipitates before he even dreamed of formulating a hypothesis
about periodic tables. Arno and Bob were not testing the hypothesis that
there was background radiation out there.

Deduction plays a role in science, but not the role suggested by the
foregoing statement of "the scientific method". In fact, _deductive_
hypothesis testing is more characteristic of math than of physics.

Relatively many people think they understand pure deduction. There is
provably no such thing as pure induction. People who have no clue what
science is tend to think that science is deductive. In fact, though, most
of real life, including most of real science, is a rich messy mixture of
deduction and induction.