The Scientific Method Is the Natural Method of Problem Solving
The scientific method has been termed the greatest discovery of science. It is the way we get scientifically based research and scientifically valid research. Based on what has been accomplished in all fields by following the stages of this method, it certainly is difficult to dispute that claim. It is not well known that this method is merely the formalization of the natural process (or stages of mental activity) instinctively used by humans since early times to survive in an ever-changing environment. Our national education reform programs largely ignore the vital development of the brain’s complete act of thought - the complete method of creative problem solving for all fields, commonly called the scientific method. Generally, scholars agree that Galileo was the first to recognize (note that I do not say invent) the need to consciously follow what became known as the method of science (later called the scientific method) as opposed to the unconscious, haphazard use of the process. In support of the theory that the scientific method is a natural, instinctive method or guide that we have merely recognized, developed, refined, extended, and applied in all fields, I offer the following quotations.
Ernest Mach, renowned scientist, explained it this way in On Scientific Thinking (1905):
“By what means has our knowledge of nature actually grown in the past, and what are the prospects for future growth in the future? The enquirer’s behavior has developed instinctively in practical activity and popular thought, and has been merely transformed to the field of science where in the end it has been developed into a conscious method.”
Marshall Walker in The Nature of Scientific Thought (1963):
“The scientific method is a formalization of the process of learning by experience. Any organism or device with a memory can learn by experience. The operation of the brain in any living thing is a rapid, automatic repetition of the basic steps of the scientific method applied to successive instantaneous situations. Some men use the scientific method consciously, but the same basic process goes on in men and animals automatically in everyday life. The scientific method is a survival technique that first appeared in primitive form in the first organism that included a memory. As the brain and nervous system increased in complexity through evolutionary processes, the sophistication of the scientific method increased. Man has the most complex brain and nervous system known, and the scientific method in its most sophisticated form is used by man as he strives for survival and comfort.”
Finally, John Holt’s statement in Learning All the Time (1989):
“Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. The process by which childrren turn experience into knowledge is exactly the same, point for point, as the process by which those whom we call scientists make scientific knowledge. Children observe, they wonder, they speculate, and they ask themselves questions. They think up possible answers, they make theories, they hypothesize, and then they test theories by asking questions or by further observations or experiments or reading. Then they modify the theories as needed, or reject them, and the process continues. This is what in “grown-up” life is called the - capital S, capital M - Scientific Method. It is precisely what these little guys start doing as soon as they are born. If we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process, we disturb it. If we continue this long enough, the process stops. The independent scientist in the child disappears.”
Now that humans have become intelligent enough to recognize (as Walker describes above) the complete method of creative problem solving “in its most sophisticated form” (the scientific method), it should be taught across the curriculum in all grades, K though college.
