Excerpt from Scientific Method, Its Philosophy and Its Practice
This book is chiefly intended for those who feel interested in the methodical procedure of scientific investigation, and although some parts of it may appeal most strongly to science teachers, yet the fact that scientific method is now destined to play so great a part not only in the whole of the educational field but also in every other field of thought and activity, may suffice to make the book welcome to a much wider circle than those whose interests are confined to the laboratory and the lecture table.
The method adopted by men of science in their work is far different now from what it was in the time of Aristotle or even In the time of Bacon. Fundamentally, the main processes of the method of science are, in character, not direct but inverse, and inverse processes almost always present great difficulties. The method of science has thus been a thing of exceedingly slow growth, and even now is by no means fully developed. We smile at the methods of Descartes, who himself found serious fault with the methods of the ancients, and there is no doubt at all that our descendants will greatly improve on the methods of the present day.
There are, however, a few original thinkers in the worlds history who have wrought strongly upon opinion and practice in scientific method, and who, in their day, effected enormous improvements upon the methods of their predecessors. Among these, Aristotle and Bacon stand supreme. But Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, and Plato of Socrates; Bacon's method was in strong contrast to that of his contemporary, Descartes; and Locke and Hume also played important parts in placing the method of science on firm foundations - Locke, in tracing to its origin the knowledge we believe we possess, and Hume in developing correct notions of causation.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Scientific Method, Its Philosophy and Its Practice (Classic Reprint) (F. W. Westaway)