Scientific method

“ In our day the true method, the method of observation, is rightly honored, and scientific questions, no longer agitated with mere parade of eloquence, are modestly studied by their facts in the seclusion of laboratories. ”

“ REFLECTIONS ON THE RESULTS AND LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. Before concluding a work on the Principles of Science, it will not be inappropriate to add some remarks upon the limits and ultimate bearings of the knowledge which we may acquire by the employment of scientific method. All science consists, it has several times been stated, in the detection of identities in the action of natural agents. ”

“ The preliminary discrimination of method is the distribution of all phenomena among certain grand divisions.
⁠7. It is of vital importance to discriminate between a division of phenomena for purposes of study, and a separation of the phenomena thernselves.
⁠8. Since the sciences deal with different aspects of the same objective world, it follows that they must cooperate to give a complete account of reality.
⁠9. Scientific method has been developed historically first in application to inorganic phenomena, then to organic life, more recently to psychical and social phenomena. ”

“ It may be a task, not hopeless, to extract from the past progress of science the elements of an effectual and substantial method of Scientific Discovery. The advances which have, during the last three centuries, been made in the physical sciences;—in Astronomy, in Physics, in Chemistry, in Natural History, in Physiology;—these are allowed by all to be real, to be great, to be striking ”

“ At first it is probable that our principal experimental work must be the illustration of particular branches of science, but as we go on we must add to this the study of scientific methods, the same method being sometimes illustrated by its application to researches belonging to different branches of science. ”

“ Now in such a case it is requisite that science, that theory, be available at every step of the undertaking, and this in the most detailed way. Every stage of the proceeding must, indeed, be absolutely controlled by scientific method. ”

“ This is well stated by one of our most experienced investigators when he says:
'Methods run with the manners and customs of the ages. In science there is no one method that can be considered indispensable. Attributes are indispensable; observation, industry, accuracy are indispensable ”

“ We see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which we ourselves employ.
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. ”

“ Man constructed a science of numbers, of the stars, of molar and molecular masses, of plants, of stones, and of creeping things, before he realized that he was himself an object capable of receiving scientific attention. ”

“ Science offers us not only a mass of phenomena to be observed, but also a body of truths which have been deduced from these observations; and, without the power of drawing correct inferences from the data acquired, exact observations would be of little value. I have already described the inductive method of reasoning, and illustrated it by two noteworthy examples, and, in a humbler measure, we must apply the same method in our daily work in the laboratory. ”

“ Science: the Knowledge of the Laws of Nature obtained by Observation, Experiment, and Reasoning. No line can be drawn between common knowledge of things and scientific knowledge; nor between common reasoning and scientific reasoning. In strictness all accurate knowledge is Science; and all exact reasoning is scientific reasoning. The method of observation and experiment by which such great results are obtained in science, is identically the same as that which is employed by every one, every day of his life, but refined and rendered precise. ”

“ In the slow approach towards truth—which is the great object of science—no single method is indispensable. The human mind is so full of activities; Nature presents such an infinite variety of resources, that progress in research can never be hindered by the choice of right instead of wrong method. ”

“ Consequently, biological research, in order to be scientific, requires a special modification of method, because the new factors of sensation and consciousness come into play in biology—factors which do not exist in astronomy, or geology, in mechanics, physics, or chemistry. ”

“ In the absence of such a Classification, it is only by viewing departments of the Universe with reference to the Method or Process employed in the investigation of their Phenomena, that we are able to estimate their present relations to Science, and to ascertain proximately their Scientific or Unscientific character. We proceed, then, to examine the connection of History, in its present development, with Science, a task to which the foregoing brief and incomplete consideration of the subject of Method has been a necessary preliminary. ”

“ Aims at a critical comparison of scientific methods of thought, with special reference to the relations between biology and the " exact sciences " of chemistry and physics.
"Interesting and valuable . . . original and striking . . . should be read and studied by all thinking men and women." — Education. ”

“ One of the urgent needs of modern physical science is a thorough investigation of the nature, methods, and aids of scientific cognition, and thus of the nature of its real limits, chiefly in the light of the teachings of comparative philology and comparative psychology. ”

“ The legitimate aim of all systematic, exact experiments is to lay a foundation of well-ascertained and closely related facts on which may be developed a superstructure of science to supersede the theoretical speculations which form an important part of the prelude of scientific discovery. ”

“ There are only two modes in which laws of nature can be ascertained--deductively and experimentally; including under the denomination of experimental inquiry, observation as well as artificial experiment. Are the laws of the formation of character susceptible of a satisfactory investigation by the method of experimentation? ”

“ It is a general truth that the physical sciences of light and heat are based upon mechanical conditions of the particles of matter; that the science of chemistry is founded upon physics; that biological phenomena are dependent upon physical and chemical conditions; that psychological subjects are based upon biology; and that biological science cannot progress excepting in proportion to the advance of the sciences on which it is based. ”

“ Do not some of the standard methods which are familiar in the descriptions or criticisms of scientific discovery, such as ‘reasoning from the known to the unknown’, ‘the adoption of a working hypothesis’, ‘the scientific use of the imagination’, often resolve themselves on analysis into the simple process of being struck by an analogy and being led by it to adopt an explanation or to try an experiment suggested by it? ”

“ The other consideration I have to put before you is that, whatever may be the results at which physical science as applied to man shall arrive, those results are inevitable—I mean that they arise out of the necessary progress of scientific thought as applied to man. ”

“ In the earlier stage of physical research, all observation and experiment lead forward to general results, which gain ready acceptance because they may be said to be involved in scientific procedure itself. ”

“ For the conclusions stated in the present work, respecting knowledge and discovery, are drawn from a connected and systematic survey of the whole range of Physical Science and its History; whereas, hitherto, philosophers have contented themselves with adducing detached examples of scientific doctrines, drawn from one or two departments of science. ”

“ Science, then, commands our respect, not on the basis that its present assumptions and deductions are absolutely and for all time true, but on the ground that its method is for all time true—the method of discovery, the method of observation, research, experimentation, comparison, examination, testing, analysis and synthesis. ”

“ The Trend of Scientific Investigations.—While research is carried on in many lines, with many different objectives, it may be stated that intense study is devoted to the nature of matter and the direct connection of it with elemental forces. ”

“ All science is based upon experience and consists in subjecting the data furnished by the senses to a rational method of investigation. Induction, analysis, comparison, observation, experiment, are the chief instruments of such a rational method. ”

“ Hence, while Chemistry and Biology, even apart from the possibility of their conversion into branches of applied Mechanics, are essentially descriptive sciences, the task fulfilled by them, so far as they use qualitative and teleological categories, is one of æsthetic and historical rather than of properly scientific description. ”

“ This scientific conception of causation has been developed and rendered definite by the investigations of those physical sciences that can avail themselves of exact experiments and mathematical calculation; and it is there, in Chemistry and Physics, that it is most at home. The conception can indeed be carried into the Biological and Social Sciences, even in its quantitative form, by making the proper allowances. For the limbs of animals are levers, and act upon mechanical principles ”

“ But I would like to call attention here to what appears to me a fundamental condition of scientific work and thereby a necessary result of scientific training. Science is naught if not exact. Accurate observation, accurate record, accurate deduction from data, all of which may be reduced to simple, plain honesty. Anything else is error, not science. ”

“ In any special natural science, a scientific description appears as an adjustment, express, conscious, exact, of the internal structure of a system of ideas to the external structure of a world of preexistent facts; and the business of science has been repeatedly defined, of late years, as simply and wholly taken up with the exact description of the facts of nature. ”

“ The discoveries which change the method of a science from experimental to deductive, mostly consist in establishing, either by deduction or by direct experiment, that the varieties of a particular phenomenon uniformly accompany the varieties of some other phenomenon better known. ”

“ The tests which we are making are given for the advancement of science and for the information of the person tested. By scientific means we will be able to separate characteristics derived from heredity and environment and to treat each class separately. ”

“ His contribution to the development of science was abstracting the method of experiment from the concrete problem to see its bearing and importance as a universal method of research. He advocated changing education to include studies of the natural world using observation, exact measurement, and experiments. ”

“ What we know as science began when man commenced to compare one fact with another, to classify phenomena, and to arrange his knowledge systematically. Order, method, system, are basic principles of science. The best description would, therefore, appear to be systematized knowledge of any kind which had been gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking. The whole field of human knowledge is now methodically formulated and arranged into rational systems. Modern science may, therefore, be said to embrace all our exact knowledge. ”

“ On this point even physicists agree. "Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science as a search after essential causes," says one of the best modern champions of scientific progress, "it ought to be, and must be, a search after facts and relations." [90] Hence, physical science deals with natural facts and their relations exclusively; the search after causes and essential principles constitutes the object of a higher science; and such a science is real philosophy, or metaphysics proper. ”

“ But in each of those sciences we shall obtain solid and complete systems of knowledge, only so far as we study, with steady thought and careful observation, that peculiar kind of cause which is appropriate to the phenomena under our consideration. ”

“ In Newspeak there is no word for “Science”. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the pastwere founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. ”

“ When a phenomenon is produced according to a certain law of nature, we call the law [or rule] the cause of that phenomenon; and to the laws or rules of nature we accordingly ascribe power or efficiency. The whole business of physics is to discover, by observation and experiment, the laws of nature, and to apply them to the solution of phenomena. ”

“ Great deficiencies remain to be supplied, and many vaguely-known points to be cleared up, nor has an effort even been made as yet to systematize all the groups of results gained. The latter task we propose to attempt here, with the purpose of showing by a remarkable instance the manner of evolving knowledge through the power of the experimental method, the sequent, cumulative, and mutually-supporting character of well-conducted experiments, and their endless wealth of instruction; in a word, the process adopted by eminent men in the great art of wresting her secrets from living Nature. ”

“ A scientific classification, on the other hand, aims at the utmost comprehensiveness, ransacking the whole world from the depths of the earth to the remotest star for new objects, and scrutinising everything with the aid of crucible and dissecting knife, microscope and spectroscope, to find the qualities and constitution of everything, in order that it may be classed among those things with which it has most in common and distinguished from those other things from which it differs. ”

“ We recognise this when we divide science into that which is experimental, or depends on apparatus, and that which is observational and classificatory—distinctions these which relate not so much to the objects of science as to our methods of pursuing them. ”