What science skills do scientists use to learn about the world

Question

What science skills do scientists use to learn about the world

Answer 1

You mean, like Math and physics and chemistry and biology?

It's observation, make a wild guess on why or how it happened, test the guess, and when it fails miserably, start with a new guess.  But an example may sever better.

Suppose that you go outside and happen to notice that the horizon is pretty straight. That's a scientific fact. You think "That's just what it would look like if the world was flat." It's a guess, but there's some evidence that it's correct. And that's how scientists form an hypothesis, which is a guess. So, you go home, and you tell your parents of your discovery. They say, "You didn't have to look. Everyone knows the world is flat." And you gain confidence in your hypothesis, having checked with the experts. But a couple months later, you've climbed a mountain, and from the top, the horizon doesn't look quite so straight anymore. But looking carefully, you notice some small color anomalies, and you think, "Oh, yeah. The atmosphere is acting like a lens - and this is just chromatic aberration. Another scientific fact. Oh, and we know that a lens can distort things, and besides, we already know the horizon is straight." Your faith in your hypothesis is strengthened, mostly by the big words you used. Laugh if you want, but this is how science is done.

A few months go by, and you hook up with a boy in India in an internet chat. At one point he mentions that it's really late at night, and has to go. But for you it's day time. You trust him, but you imagine that he's on the other side of the world. The world is flat, and one side is night. Well, things develop, and you book a flight to India to meet this guy in person. On the way, you carefully watch out the window for the edge of the world, but you never see it. Your faith in this flat Earth model is shaken, not stirred. (This is an action/adventure detective story, uncovering secrets.)

You've been back home for months, and you see a total eclipse of the Moon. These events are quite common, and you've seen three of them before. You see the round shadow of the Earth cross the face of the Moon. It was round each time you saw it. You conclude that the Earth must be a sphere to always cast a round shadow on the Moon. You tell your parents this, but they spank you. You decide to elope with that nice boy in India. But by the time you get there, his parents have married him off. And that's when you start to develop your first truly scientific theory of the world. The world isn't flat after all. The world is really messed up.

Answer 2

The two biggest ones are critical thinking and the power of observation.  There is also deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning.