<text><span class="style10">he Scientific Method (1 of 3)</span><span class="style7">The spectacular successes of the natural sciences from the 17th century onwards have prompted a search for `the scientific method'. Until the 20th century this was seen as the search for a general set of instructions or recipe for getting scientific results. But nowadays it has become an attempt to describe the general aims of science. Scientific method is now thought of as whatever in practice serves to promote those aims.Asking what all the various subjects popularly called `sciences' have in common would yield only platitudes like `Don't jump to conclusions in the absence of firm evidence.' So attention has focused on clear </span><span class="style26">paradigms</span><span class="style7"> - or models - of science such as physics. Physical theories are paradigms of </span><span class="style26">comprehensiveness</span><span class="style7"> because they explain physical processes that vary in scale from the subatomic (about 10 to the power of -15 m or less) to the astronomical (billions of billions of kilometers), and vary in time from about 10 to the power of -24 seconds to billions of years. Furthermore, physical theories yield paradigms of </span><span class="style26">accurate prediction</span><span class="style7">. For example, NASA was able to calculate the speed, direction and time of launch needed to send the </span><span class="style26">Voyager 2</span><span class="style7"> spacecraft, without any later course correction, on a journey of thousands of millions of miles passing close to each of the outer planets in turn.By studying paradigms of science we may hope to answer still controversial questions such as `Is Freudian psychiatry really scientific?' or `Can social or historical processes be explained scientifically, as Karl Marx claimed?'</span></text>
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<text><span class="style10">ir Karl Popper.</span><span class="style7"> According to Popper, knowledge is better advanced by scientists attempting to </span><span class="style26">disprove</span><span class="style7"> theories, rather than trying to prove them.</span></text>
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<text>ΓÇó THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMYΓÇó THE HISTORY OF SCIENCEΓÇó THE HISTORY OF MEDICINEΓÇó PHILOSOPHY</text>
