The Scientific Method

The purpose of science is to find laws, or theories, that explain the nature of the world we observe. These theories must be as simple, and self-contained as possible and account for all known facts relevant to the phenomena of interest. Examples of successful theories include Darwin's theory of evolution, which explains how life evolved into the diverse forms that now exist, Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes the interactions of astronomical objects, as well as the evolution of the observed Universe as a whole and quantum mechanics, which explains the microscopic world of atoms and is the basis for many technological devices, such as transistors and lasers.

No theory, however, must be considered as final, or absolute. Scientific theories generally are born from, and later die from, what is called the scientific method. This is a general cycle of identifying a pattern in some phenomena, making a general hypothesis, predicting new phenomena based on this hypothesis, and testing the predictions by experiment. This is represented in the figure below.

 

Figure 1.1: Scientific Method

There are several things to note about this method.

• It is important to be as objective as possible.
• There is no right place to enter the cycle.
• Experiments must be reproducible.
• There is no end to the cycle.
• The cycle is not rigid.