Aristotle

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Aristotle

Aristotle, Galileo, and Pasteur can be said to have contributed significantly, each in his own way, to the development of The Scientific Method. Discuss.
What is the scientific method? In general, this method has three parts, which we might call (1) gathering evidence, (2) making a hypothesis, and (3) testing the hypothesis. As scientific methodology is practiced, all three parts are used together at all stages, and therefore no theory, however rigorously tested, is ever final, but remains at all times tentative, subject to new observation and continued testing by such observation.
Hellenic science was built upon the foundations laid by Thales and Pythagoras. It reached its zenith in the works of Aristotle and Archimedes. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) represents the first tradition, that of qualitative forms and teleology. He was, himself, a biologist whose observations of marine organisms were unsurpassed until the 19th century. Biology is essentially teleological--the parts of a living organism are understood in terms of what they do in and for the organism--and Aristotle's biological works provided the framework for the science until the time of Charles Darwin. Aristotle was able to make a great deal of sense of observed nature by asking of any object or process: what is the material involved, what is its form and how did it get that form, and, most important of all, what is its purpose? What should be noted is that, for Aristotle, all activity that occurred spontaneously was natural. Hence, the proper means of investigation was observation. Experiment, that is, altering natural conditions in order to throw light on the hidden properties and activities of objects, was unnatural and could not, therefore, be expected to reveal the essence of things. However, the establishment of the importance of classifying knowledge and of observation as well as the introduction of the deductive method of reasoning can be taken as Aristotles most significant contributions to the scientific method. Even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking.
The critical tradition of science began with Copernicus in the sixteenth century. It eventually led to the work of Galileo (1564-1642), which criticised the very roots of the Aristotelian world system. With the invention of the telescope Galileo, in quick succession, announced that there were mountains on the Moon, satellites circling...

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