We could go into all of the important discoveries science has given us, but we're pretty sure you'd like to finish reading this before your 100th birthday. Instead we're going to talk about one really important discovery: the scientific method itself.

The Ancients

People have been doing science since they've been able to ask questions, they just haven't always written it down. The earliest records we have of the scientific method date back to 1600 BCE, to a document called the Edwin Smith papyrus. This was basically a primitive medical textbook that talked about how to diagnose disease, but it did so in a totally methodical, rational way.¹

From there, ancient Babylonians dabbled in astronomy and math, and the Greeks started to use natural explanations for phenomena. This laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the scientific method.

It's All Greek to Us

A Greek dude named Aristotle was the first one to start thinking about science in terms of collecting evidence. We call this radical idea empiricism. Before Aristotle, philosophers thought empirical evidence, like measurements, was for carpenters. Well they weren't wrong, measurements are totally important to carpenters, but Aristotle pointed out that all that talk the philosophers were doing needed to be backed up by some real-world evidence.

Aristotle was all about making observations, which is a major part of the scientific method. He believed that making observations helps us gain knowledge by building on what we already know. The scientific method we know and love today is a big fan of building on what previous scientists have done, so Aristotle was definitely headed in the right direction.

Actually, It's Not All Greek

An Islamic scholar, Ibn al-Haytham, took this idea and went a step further. He developed a procedure for answering a question that is an awful lot like the scientific method we're familiar with. He started with an observation and question, then proposed an explanation for them. His innovation was to then design and run an experiment to test his idea, analyze his data to come to a conclusion, and publish his findings. He also understood that experiments with clearly tested variables were where it's at, and that these types of experiments were crucial to answering questions.

The Renaissance: It's About More Than Just Paintings

Then we get to the Renaissance. They say everything is better in the Renaissance, even the security. In the Renaissance, European scholars took a crack at the scientific method, and in true scientist form, built upon what the ancient Greeks and Muslims had already done.

Roger Bacon actually started us off a tad bit before the Renaissance. We'll let that slide though, because he was a total rock star at recording his experiments so others could duplicate them, which is a crucial part of advancing scientific smarts. Francis Bacon (no relation) was a supporter of using experimental evidence to get rid of funky explanations so we could figure out the real truth. Kevin Bacon starred in Footloose, which is not related to science, but we just wanted to keep with the bacon theme. Also, we like bacon.

Okay, back to the Renaissance. Galileo came next and he was, like, the Michael Jackson of science. He got the ball rolling on the whole gravity thing and was seriously into inductive reasoning. This means he used lots of specific observations to come up with a general explanation. For example, he noticed that when he dropped his favorite quill, his roasted turkey leg, or his telescope, they all hit the ground. He also noticed that stuff like horse carts, houses, and humans didn't float off into the clouds. These specific observations led him to reason that there must be some force (ahem, gravity) pulling them down.

Still a little "huh?" on inductive reasoning? Here's another example from our century. Let's say every Shmoop page you've been to has made you laugh. Based on your observations (and our quick wit), you could use inductive reasoning to conclude that everything on the Shmoop site is jam packed with hilarity. And you would be totally right.

The Royal Society was also born in the Renaissance. This was a group of science experts whose motto was "take nobody's word for it". If you wanted them to put their seal of approval on your scientific claim, you'd better have the experimental evidence to back it up, because these guys didn't mess around. They would go through experiments with a fine-toothed comb, making sure procedures were clear, evidence was collected properly, and conclusions actually made sense. If an experiment survived their scrutiny, it got published in a journal and was considered the cat's pajamas in the scientific world. Today, we still run scientist's work through a gauntlet of experts to determine which experiments should be published. We don't really use the phrase "the cat's pajamas" anymore, though.

Mr. Popper's Swans

As time marched on, so did our understanding of the natural world and our development of technology. Science became more complex, expanding into fields our scientific forefathers never even imagined. The more we learned about science, though, the more we realized that it's not as simple as we thought it was.

Karl Popper, a 20th century philosopher, pointed out that inductive reasoning had a flaw, because a bunch of confirmatory observations doesn't necessarily make an idea true. Take swans for example. For hundreds of years, people had only ever seen swans with white feathers, so they inductively reasoned that black swans didn't exist, patted themselves on the back, and called it a day. Then a Dutch explorer found a bunch of black swans in Australia and everyone felt pretty sheepish, or swanish.

Popper knew there had to be a better way to get to the scientific truth. He introduced the idea that an explanation needs to be falsifiable in order to be considered scientific. This just means that it can be proven false. For example, the explanation that all swans are white can be proven false when a black swan shows up to the party.

So, should we just toss out all of the explanations that haven't been falsified yet? Popper says no. We'll just keep on keepin' on, working with these explanations as though they're true, up until the point they're falsified. For example, the idea that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow is based on 4.6 billion years of eastern sunrises. Is it possible that tomorrow the sun rises in the west? Or doesn't rise at all? Sure, it's possible. It's not likely, but possible, and our original idea would be falsified so we'd just have to come up with a new one.²

Kuhn You Dig It?

Thomas Kuhn was another 20th century philosopher of science. He noticed that science doesn't chug along like a snail crossing the Sahara. It's more like an energetic toddler, attempting to reach the cookie jar on top of the fridge. Kuhn explained that there are two phases to science, the "normal science" phase and the "revolutionary" phases.³

Normal science, as described by Kuhn, is essentially puzzle solving around a common concept, or paradigm. Take our toddler, for example. To solve the cookie puzzle, he'll probably try standing on a chair or a stepstool, throwing stuff at the cookie jar, reaching it with a toy vacuum, or convincing the cat she should knock the jar off the fridge. These are all things he's familiar with, and he'll learn what works and what doesn't from each attempt.

When we get into the revolutionary stuff, Kuhn says we're not necessarily learning stuff faster or building on the knowledge that came in the normal science phase. Revolutionary science can be, well, revolutionary. It can be something we never saw coming that changes our scientific beliefs. If we go back to our toddler, we know his world revolves around getting those cookies. However, when his mom walks in with a gooey chocolate cake in hand, that chocolate cake causes him to totally reassess his belief in needing a cookie. Now if only he had some milk…

Science: It Works

From Aristotle to Popper and al-Haytham to Kuhn, the one thing that has remained the same is the basic goal of science. Making observations, asking questions, performing experiments, and using evidence to support our conclusions is one process that never goes out of style.⁴