Nickles

THESTRANGESTORYOFSCIENTIFICMETHOD

1. Introduction
In surveying the prior history of discovery, Bacon could find no rhyme or
reason to it. We can construct only a chronicle of disconnected episodes of
chance observation or luck. But Descartes, the mathematician, saw something
different. In his survey of the previous history of inquiry and problem solving,
he was struck by the mathematicalprowess of the ancient Greeks; and he
concluded that in order to make so many important discoveries so quickly, they
must have had a method of discovery

Their amazingly innovative productivity could not plausibly have been a
product merely of exceptional human intellects, even with the help of luck or
chance.
Yet there is no design without a designer, no intelligent product without
anintelligent producer

2. Traditional Views of Method and Discovery

It is its distinctive method that
1 demarcates science from other human endeavors.
2 accounts for the unity of the sciences as a single project, Science.
3 provides an essential definition of science. (“Science is a specific method
of inquiry as well as a collection of particular results, a special process
as well as theproduct of that process.”)
4 directs scientific research (discovery) and guarantees its results (justification).
(Method as the process side, or process control mechanism, of
foundational epistemology.)
5 explains particular discoveries. (“Scientist S discovered d because S
applied the scientific method to problem p.”)
6 explains the enviable progress of science as a whole.
7 explains theScientific Revolution5 and rise to dominance of the modern
West, but also
8 explains the rapid international diffusion of science since then.

Some characteristics of method
1 There exists one, master scientific method as the guiding theory of the
research process, although there are many efficacious local procedures—
instances or applications of the general method.
2 Method is a new kind oflogic or inference procedure and thus
(a) normative. Method consists of rules for productive thinking and
acting in inquiry, and perhaps also a catalogue of errors to avoid.
(b) computational. Method involves mechanical, quasi-algorithmic or
at least rule-based, rational, step-by-step procedures.
(c) ahistorical: Logic is not context-dependent and, in this sense, exists
outside of history.(Logical possibility covers all historical possibilities.)
(d) content-neutral, a priori. Method includes no empirical claims
about the universe.6
(e) hence, domain neutral and culturally neutral, thus universal and
portable. Method
i applies to all scientific problems and fields during all historical
periods.
ii transfers from one problem or field to another and from one
person or researchlaboratory to another, regardless of nationality.
iii does not discriminate (much) on grounds of mental capacity;
smoothes out differences, levels the playing field by furnishing
intelligence a mental prosthetic (Bacon, Descartes), thereby
minimizing this sort of constitutive luck.
3 Regarding “discovery”, method satisfies 2a–2d above, plus it
(f) minimizes the need for luck, since methodsuffices in principle7 to
make all discoveries, including deep, postulatory theories introducing
new theoretical language.
(g) contains all possible discoveries implicitly.
(h) explains discovery computationally, or at least shows how such
discovery is possible.
(i) justifies the claims it produces.
(j) achieves item 3i in a generative (i.e., stronger than consequentialist)
manner.8Howstrange andwonderful is this scientific method—a panacea for our most
pressing epistemic problems, a gift from God that gives human investigators
almost supernatural powers of intellect! The method itself contains all discoveries
about our universe implicitly yet in itself is free of explicit empirical
content. It must apply to all possible contexts, including all possible worlds.
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