The scientific method: steps of faith not leaps

The original step in the scientific method isn’t included in the usual description:

1. Acquire data.
2. Form predictive hypotheses that explain the data.
3. (Occam’s razor) Choose that hypothesis which rests on the simplest set of assumptions.
4. Perform an experiment to test the predictions of the hypothesis.
5. Return to step 1 and iterate until a theory emerges from the hypotheses which predicts all available experimental data.

The original step is the one that separated physics from philosophy during the enlightenment. To wedge it into the list above, we’ll call it the zeroth step.

In the 17th century, before physics and philosophy diverged into separate fields of study, philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes pointed out the sort of fact that sounds brilliant because it is so obvious that it tends to elude elucidation: Cogtio ergo sum = I think therefore I am. It is the essential statement of existence. It’s perfect reason; a thinking thing, by the very fact that it is thinking, must exist. But it doesn’t say whether or not anything else, like the universe, exists. It doesn’t provide any reason to believe your senses, any reasons to believe that the world you perceive when awake is the real world and the one you perceive while asleep is a simulacrum.

The zeroth step of the scientific method is:

      0. “Okay, what the hell, let’s take a step of faith and assume that our senses provide accurate data: let’s assume that there really is a world outside our thoughts.”

It is not a leap of faith, it’s a single step, but it is a statement of faith. It rests on no convincing proof and so, it stops philosophy in its tracks.

The only data available to us comes in five simple forms: touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell. Along with the wetware of our brain circuitry, these five senses are our complete interface with the universe and with each other. Some of the brain circuitry is already set up by instinct, but a lot of it is modified by the feedback loop of input from the five senses – processing that input – acting on the results of the processing to then impose on the outside world which, of course, brings more data from the senses. The feedback process allows us to adapt by developing a complex set of prejudices, intelligence, enlightenment and wisdom.

An implied consequence of the scientific method, since an individual cannot measure every variable, perform every experiment, and make every calculation, is that we must rely on our colleagues. It’s another step along the road of faith, however apprehensively and skeptically we tread.

In doing science, skepticism is the wonderful thing that prevents us from taking leaps of faith.

(You are welcome to republish the text of this article, but not the images, without needing further permission, provided that you attribute the work to its author, Ransom Stephens, Ph.D. Ransom is also the author of The God Patent, a story wrapped around one of the central conflicts of our time: faith in science versus faith in religion.)