The Scientific Method

The scientific method is the general name for the loop of observing, forming a testable hypothesis, predicting what that hypothesis implies, and checking the prediction against experiment or further observation, revising or discarding the hypothesis when it fails. It is usually taught as a fixed sequence of steps, but historians and philosophers of science have long argued there is no single method every scientist actually follows: physics, field biology and epidemiology gather and test evidence in genuinely different ways, and figures like Paul Feyerabend argued the very idea of one universal method does not survive contact with the real history of science. This atlas treats it as the family of practices the rest of its concept entries, the controlled trial, peer review, falsifiability, reproducibility, are the working parts of, rather than as one fixed recipe.