The Scientific Method

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2012

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.With: Simon SchafferProfessor of the History of Science at the University of CambridgeJohn WorrallProfessor of the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics and Political ScienceMichela MassimiSenior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at University College London.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the programme.
0:12.0	Hello in 1620 the Lord Chancellor England was the distinguished scholar Lord Verilum.
0:17.0	He was not just a lawyer, born Francis Bacon, he was also a philosopher and scientist.
0:22.0	And that year he published a book that has come
0:24.7	to be seen as his masterpiece.
0:26.6	The Novum or Garnum proposes a new approach to the investigation of the laws of nature,
0:31.9	a scientific method based on experience and observation.
0:35.8	My method, Redbacon, though hard to practice, is easy to explain.
0:40.0	I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly
0:45.9	from the simple sensuous perception.
0:49.2	Bacon's new and certain path is often seen as the beginning of the modern scientific method, a set of rules
0:54.2	guiding scientific inquiry which have been the subject of intense debate over the
0:58.8	intervening 500 years. Some scholars have seen the scientific method as an essential part of modern
1:04.8	scholarship. Others, like the 19th century biologist Thomas Huxley, regarded as an extension
1:10.2	of common sense. With me to discuss the Scientific Method are Simon Schaefer,
1:15.0	Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge,
1:18.0	John Warrell, Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics, and Michaela Massimi, senior lecturer of the
1:26.7	Philosophy of Science at University College London.
1:29.2	Simon Schaffer, would you begin by giving us a slightly more precise idea of what is meant by the phrase scientific method?
1:35.7	Well, we would like our stories about the world to be true and as simple as they possibly can be and to have as large an extent as possible to be
1:45.4	maybe even universal. But the world as finance ministers, for example, keep on
	...

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