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Scientific Method: Observations
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Scientific method depends upon increasingly more sophisticated characterizations of subjects of the investigation. (The subjects can ... be called unsolved problems or the unknowns). For example, Benjamin Franklin correctly characterized St. Elmo's fire as electrical in nature, but it has taken a long series of experiments and theory to establish this. While seeking the pertinent properties of the subjects, this careful thought may also entail some definitions and observations; the observations often demand careful measurements and/or counting.
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The scientific method begins with observation. Observation often demands careful measurement. It ... requires the establishment of operational definitions of measurements and other relevant concepts. Definitions are not scientific hypotheses; they are not "falsifiable"; they are simply a way to ensure that everyone is talking about, experimentally testing, etc the same thing. Definitions condense a number of ideas into a single word or phrase. That being said, an observer's definition could differ significantly from commonly understood concepts of a term, and still be correct.
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When you are writing a paper on the scientific method, write down the problem and look at the conditions surrounding the problems. Write a title then write out what you want to do. Carefully write out your observation. Be objective with your findings and get information concerning the problem or situation. Obtaining this information is called a literature review and is an important component of the scientific method. Isolate significant facts then summarize the problem.
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The scientific method has evolved over many centuries and has now come to be described in terms of a well-recognized and well-defined series of steps. First, information, or data, is gathered by careful observation of the phenomenon being studied. On the basis of that information a preliminary generalization, or hypothesis, is formed, usually by inductive reasoning, and this in turn leads by deductive logic to a number of implications that may be tested by further observations and experiments (see induction; deduction). If the conclusions drawn from the original hypothesis successfully meet all these tests, the hypothesis becomes accepted as a scientific theory or law; if additional facts are in disagreement with the hypothesis, it may be modified or discarded in favor of a new hypothesis, which is then subjected to further tests. Even an accepted theory may eventually be overthrown if enough contradictory evidence is found, as in the case of Newtonian mechanics, which was shown after more than two centuries of acceptance to be an approximation valid only for speeds much less than that of light.
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The inductive method (usually called the scientific method) is the deductive method "turned upside down". The deductive method starts with a few true statements (axioms) with the goal of proving many true statements (theorems) that logically follow from them. The inductive method starts with many observations of nature, with the goal of finding a few, powerful statements about how nature works (laws and theories).
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The idealised method adopts a foundationalist epistemology, implicitly claiming that observations do not require justification and that observation is needed to get the scientific process underway. That observation is embedded in theory undermines its ability to act as the unjustified base of a foundationalist epistemology. It appears to be reasonable, when someone claims to have made an observation, to ask them to justify their claim.
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