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The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, not the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of ...
The hypothesis of Andreas Cellarius, showing the planetary motions in eccentric and epicyclical orbits. A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess or ...
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.
Hypothesis testing is also taught at the postgraduate level. Statisticians learn how to create good statistical test procedures (like z, Student's t, F and chi-squared). Statistical hypothesis testing is considered a mature area within statistics, [25] but a limited amount of development continues.
Echoing this, Stephen Hawking states, "A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations." He also discusses the "unprovable but ...
Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible. The practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist. In short, a hypothesis is testable if there is a possibility of deciding whether it is true or false based on experimentation by anyone.
Use of the phrase "working hypothesis" goes back to at least the 1850s. [7]Charles Sanders Peirce came to hold that an explanatory hypothesis is not only justifiable as a tentative conclusion by its plausibility (by which he meant its naturalness and economy of explanation), [8] but also justifiable as a starting point by the broader promise that the hypothesis holds for research.
In contrast, Lavoisier, developing the theory of elements, explained the same observations with reference to oxygen. [4] A causal relationship between the observations and hypothesis does not exist to cause the observation to be taken as evidence, [ 3 ] but rather the causal relationship is provided by the person seeking to establish ...