Why You Should Care About the Scientific Method
It’s not as obvious as you think
Today, scientific reasoning is under attack. Politicians, pundits, and ordinary people on both ends of the political and ideological spectrum have seized the prerogative to invent conclusions. Without bridging their divides using scientifically established reasoning, Americans are thinking, living, and voting solely according to personal beliefs. There is a place for personal belief in American life; yet simply discarding the scientific method only expands the gaping chasm between those of opposite views.
I first learned about the scientific method in elementary school, and I must admit, I thought the lesson was a waste of time. The method is most often taught stepwise: a scientist makes observations, crafts a hypothesis from those observations, designs an experiment to test that hypothesis, carries out the experiment, analyzes the data, and draws conclusions about whether or not his hypothesis was false. This method meant, my teacher explained, that a scientist couldn’t simply decide how some phenomenon worked without first testing it. I remember thinking, Well duh.
I had no clue that my boredom that day was in fact a triumph in the context of Western scientific progress. The idea that hypotheses should be tested on their validity was so ingrained in me, even at that tender age, that I found the suggestion that it was a new concept preposterous. Yet just 500 years ago, Galileo turned the Western world’s foundation of knowledge on its head with that very concept. In opposition to the theories of Aristotle, held as truth for the previous 18 centuries, Galileo showed empirically that heavier objects do not fall to the earth any faster than lighter objects; all objects fall at the same speed, regardless of mass. According to legend, he performed a trial of this experiment in spectacular fashion from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa. That such a simple experiment could disprove the wisdom of an ancient and venerated philosopher was disconcerting, to say the least. Galileo was later put under house arrest for his radical ideas.
The Scientific Renaissance, beginning with Copernicus and Galileo and later advanced by Locke, Descartes, and others, didn’t only provide a solid foundation for the unprecedented rate of scientific progress which followed. The articulation of the scientific method also changed the way humans see the world.
In imperial Rome at the height of its power, the city government instituted a grain dole to provide free or subsidized grain to a large portion of the city’s inhabitants. This dole, designed to sustain the growing population, was distributed to citizens simply because they were Roman. As such, the poorest inhabitants of the city, considered un-Roman due to their social status, were excluded. Included men were provided for, regardless of need, because they were productive members of society.
In 1939, the U.S. instituted a similar policy known as the Food Stamps Program. In the case of the FSP, however, assistance was distributed only to those with limited options to provide for themselves. Such a distribution plan, which makes perfect sense to us today, is predicated on the hypothesis that providing for those who cannot provide for themselves will allow such people an opportunity to become productive members of society. Throughout the Western world, this hypothesis has been tested and found valid. Conversely, providing for already productive members of society has the hollow ring of false logic — yet the Romans possessed no established basis for reasoning this way.
Realizing the profound change the scientific method has wrought in the process of human logic allows us to see why it is such a valuable tool which can be used across disciplines and, yes, even across party lines. Americans are always going to disagree with each other. But disagreeing in a thoughtful, reasoned way is what prompted every leaping improvement in this country’s history. Without the common ground of empirical reason — from which we will inevitably propose different policies and solutions — we will be unable to escape the cycle of rancor and denigration currently consuming our country.
