The value of the scientific method can, perhaps, be summed up in the following verses from English poet Alexander Pope.
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
–Alexander Pope
The above bit of verse might be mediocre, but it sums up a change developing in European society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At that time, Europe entered a period of intellectual history known as the Scientific Revolution. Before this, what passed for science in Europe was, by modern, rational standards, not very scientific. Most people, even the few educated ones, formed their knowledge of how the world functions from either The Bible or classical authors such as Aristotle. Alongside of these beliefs existed an array of explanations for natural phenomena that we might classify as magic or superstition.
One of the early thinkers responsible for improving European knowledge of science was a Polish astronomer named Nicolai Copernicus. He formulated the heliocentric (sun-centered) model of our solar system, which demonstrated that the earth orbited around the sun, rather than the opposite. His work, later improved on by noted figures such as Johannes Kepler, revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos by describing the motion of the planets and other heavenly bodies. (To be accurate, we should acknowledge that astronomers in ancient Babylon understood some of the things Kepler discovered about 3,000 years before he published his findings, but because the modern world had to re-learn these things, their re-discoverers tend to get the credit.) Men like Galileo Galilei used telescopes to make further observations about the heavens.
Another critical development of the Scientific Revolution was the scientific method. An Englishman named Francis Bacon was among the most forceful early proponents of this method. Bacon popularized the idea of using experiments to arrive at useful knowledge, promoting a systematic approach to arrive at conclusions based on observations. Over time, others refined the scientific method into the form scientists follow today, in which experimenters propose a hypothesis, test it in controlled experiments that isolate the variable they are testing, and then formulate conclusions based on the results. Additionally, the results must be reproducible for others employing the same method.
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The scientific method remains enormously important. It is one of the pillars of rational thought. Most of the technology we enjoy today exists because of it. In addition, the method is applicable to almost any field of knowledge. Rejecting conclusions that data or evidence does not substantiate, and accepting the conclusions that it does, lies at the heart of most disciplines of study.
When Galileo published his discoveries in 1632, authorities in the Roman Catholic Church reacted with hostility. They forced Galileo to retract his conclusions and placed him under house arrest for the rest of his life. Some political leaders in our day have reacted in a similarly hostile manner to scientific findings they do not like. The big issues of today are different, certainly, but the reaction of science’s opponents has not changed markedly. They deny the validity of the research, manufacture alternative explanations out of their imaginations, and undertake public campaigns of misinformation to obfuscate the facts. This is just as irrational and irresponsible today as it was 400 years ago, and does not benefit any of us. While much of the blame falls on the shoulders of those intentionally misleading the public, the public deserves censure as well, for mistrusting the findings of science and allowing our so-called leaders to get away with such nonsense.
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