Why do you think scientists utilize each step of the scientific method for experimentation and reasoning?

Question

Discuss the importance of each step in the scientific method. Why do you think scientists utilize this type of experimentation and reasoning?

Scientific method as in observation, question, hypothesis, test the hypothesis, ect....

Just curious, thank you!!!

Answer 1

I know you are looking for a long answer... but it is very simple. By following the "method" you are able to systematically eliminate miss direction in thinking and logic.

Answer 2

Hi Cuvel,

I sort of answered this in another question, but here goes again any way.

The scientific method is a construct of both logic and procedure that was agreed upon at some early global conference of scholars and scientists within the past 250 years or so.

The idea is that all thought (Socratic reasoning) begins with an observation in the real world which logically leads to a question.  My favorite story told in logic class was of a French scientist who observed a closet at his place of work.  Each time he would take all of the hangars out of it, he would go back to the closet and find more hangars.

So his observation was that hangars would appear as if out of nowhere in the closet.  So he asked the question, where do these hangars come from?  He said to himself, "what if I observed this closet over a long period of time, say several months?" So he did...this was his observation, his experimentation if you will, though not very carefully thought out.

After observing the closet and removing hangars from it each time they would appear, he hypothesized that a closed closet would spontaneously generate hangars.

He decided to test his hypothesis by observing closets at other locations periodically, each time removing any hangars that he found in them.  

This let to his postulating a Theory upon his experimentation that all empty closets will spontaneously generate hangars.

Well, there you have it....like many of our Theories today, like Global Warming; this example goes just to show you how entirely fool proof the scientific method is.

Get the picture?