B Science and the Scientific Method
Science aims to give a complete, comprehensive, accurate accounting of nature: how things are, how they got to be that way, and how they will be in the future. And it seeks this information for all things and events, everywhere in the universe, and for all times—past, present, and future.
In short, science wants to know everything about nature, and it wants to be absolutely certain of its knowledge: this is Truth with a capital T—the shining ideal. Of course, achieving 100% certain Truth is just not going to happen; both logic and physical laws prevent it. To one extent or another, we must be eternally uncertain. Much of what we'll have to say about the hypothesis has to do with the paradox created by the search for Truth in the context of uncertainty.Almost everyone in the discussion of the hypothesis agrees that, whatever it is, a hypothesis is part of something called the Scientific Method, a reality-based, evidence-driven approach to studying nature. However, the Method does not actually exist as a thing or even a process, and it is not defined by a single list of steps. It is a collection of guidelines or principles, a mindset, that forms the basis of scientific inquiry. The Oxford Dictionary4 says that the Scientific Method is “a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” This is not a set recipe: the types of observation, measurement, experiment and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses vary across investigations. Furthermore, the steps don't have to happen in any fixed order and rarely occur in a linear sequence; they repeat or loop back on each other, as Figure 2.1 suggests. So, knowing that the hypothesis is a fundamental component of the Scientific Method and is useful for the rational investigation of nature doesn't tell us much about it.
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