Outline of scientific method

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the scientific method:

Scientific method – body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable, empirical, reproducible, measurable evidence, and subject to the laws of reasoning.

Scientific method
Background
Platonic idealism Logical argument Bayesian inference
Scientific community
In the Middle Ages In the Renaissance Scientific Revolution
Characterization
Natural sciences Discoveries Experiments
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Scientific method

• Science
• Philosophy of science
• Sociology of knowledge
• Process of science
• Knowledge

Research

• Basic research

Observation

• Scientific method
• Causation
• Investigation
• Measurement (Outline of metrology and measurement)

Hypothesis

• pro:Karl Popper
  • Falsifiability
• con:Paul Feyerabend
• Statistical hypothesis testing

Experiment

• Laboratory
• Laboratory techniques
• Design of experiments
• Scientific control
• Natural experiment
• Observational study
• Field experiment
• Self-experimentation
  • Self-experimentation in medicine
• Placebo effect

• Scientific theory

• Prediction
  • Bayesian inference – subjective use of statistical reasoning
  • Deductive reasoning
  • Retrodiction

• Peer review
• Medical peer review

Empirical methods

• Empiricism
• Robert Grosseteste
• Peter Parker
• Empirical validation
• Operationalization

• Uncomfortable science — Inference from a limited sample of data
• Exploratory data analysis
• Confirmatory data analysis

• Thomas Kuhn
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  • Paradigm
  • Paradigm shift

The problem of induction questions the logical basis of scientific statements.

• Inductive reasoning appears to lie at the core of the scientific method, yet also appears to be invalid.
• David Hume was the person who first pointed out the problem of induction.
• Karl Popper offered one solution, Falsifiability

• Tacit knowledge

• Junk science
• Pseudoscience
• Pathological science
• Fringe science

• Paul Feyerabend argued that the search for a definitive scientific method was misplaced and even counterproductive.
• Imre Lakatos attempted to bridge the gap between Popper and Kuhn.
• Sociology of scientific knowledge
• Scientism

• Science and technology studies
• Theories of technology

• Elegance
• Occam's razor

• Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics
• Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine
• Roger Bacon's Opus Majus
• Francis Bacon's Novum Organum
• Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

• Alhazen
• Francis Bacon
• Galileo Galilei
• Isaac Newton
• René Descartes
• Charles Sanders Peirce

• Bayesian probability
  • Quasi-empirical methods
  • Foundation ontology
  • Ontology
  • Philosophy of mathematics
  • Mathematics
• Epistemology
  • Post-processual archaeology is a methodological curiosity from Archaeology.
  • Structuralism
    • Post-structuralism
    • Deconstruction
    • Postmodernism
    • Latour, Bruno
    • Secularism-
• Physical law
  • Science policy
  • Scientific Revolution
  • Sociology of knowledge
  • Science studies