Revisiting the Scientific Method

This book is a follow-up to the previous book by the author ('The 8-Fold Way of the Scientific Method'). The previous book introduced the reader to the way science is done: Strict adherence to objectivity, rationality, and transparency in handling information about a natural phenomenon we want to understand. The present book goes a step further and takes a critical look at the Scientific Method to see what can be done to make science more inclusive in scope; for example by giving due importance to subjective or experiential information also, and not only empirical information. Together the two books provide a fairly comprehensive account of the nature of scientific research, and can serve as course material for the training of an aspiring scientist. The theme of consciousness runs throughout the present book, because it is the most important example of a nonphysical phenomenon or entity that current science, by and large, tends to stay away from. Ways are suggested for dealing with this problem by relaxing in a carefully guarded manner some of the eight tenets of the present Scientific Method. Big Data is a rather recent development in the history of science. Its availability is going to have far-reaching consequences for the way science is going to be done now. The book discusses its promises and pitfalls. Present-day science, which is mostly reductionistic in approach, is not adequate enough for dealing with complex systems. Here again, Big Data may be of big help because pattern formation is an important characteristic of many complex systems, and Big Data is very good (rather too good!) at discerning patterns or correlations. Discussion of Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion occupies substantial space in this short book. This is because this criterion is the main reason why the present Scientific Method labels many questions about Nature as unscientific or nonscientific, thus limiting the scope of scientific enquiry. In a more inclusive approach one would also give due importance to the philosophical rival of falsificationism, namely verificationism. Another way of making science more inclusive is to use a diluted version of falsificationism, formulated by Imre Lakatos. There is also a discussion of the work of some other philosophers of science, notably Nicholas Maxwell and Thomas Kuhn. Popper's philosophy for doing science has proved to be very successful, but it is desirable that the student of science be also aware of other models of how science can progress.