Scientific Method

One of the most significant events in Renaissance science was the development of the scientific method. Modern scientists use this phrase to refer to a specific form of inquiry that involves forming a theory, or hypothesis, and using experiments to test it. The theory may change based on the results of the experiments. During the Renaissance, however, "scientific method" had a somewhat different meaning, which had its origins in the work of the ancient Greek philosopher ARISTOTLE.

Ancient scholars such as Aristotle and his teacher PLATO had used the term method—based on the Greek words meta, meaning "following," and hodos, meaning "way"—to refer to a process of rational inquiry. Plato described a method for investigating subjects in the area of the arts, and Aristotle extended the idea to all fields of knowledge. Later thinkers, such as the physician GALEN in the late 100s and the mathematician Pappus in the 300s, applied the concept of method to their own fields of study.

Italian scholars in the mid-1500s began to revive the ancient concept of method and to apply it to the study of science. Jacopo Zabarella of Padua drew a distinction between method and order. Order, as he defined it, meant simply learning one thing before another, while method involved using the knowledge of one concept to lead to understanding of another. Girolamo Borro, a teacher of Italian scientist Galileo GALILEI, described method as the quickest way to gain a particular knowledge or skill. Another of Galileo's teachers, Francesco Buonamici, also stressed the importance of method as a way to progress from one piece of knowledge to another.

Galileo gave his own account of scientific method in his Logical Treatises*, written around 1589. He defined method as a two-stage process. The first stage involved looking at an effect and reasoning backward to find its cause. For instance, a scientist might see a shadow on the ground and try to determine what type of object was casting it. Then, in the second stage, the thinker would reason forward from this cause to determine the effect—in this case, attempting to show that the object in question would indeed cast a shadow of that shape. However, Galileo, like Zabarella, believed that a third stage had to take place in between to prove that the cause in question was truly responsible for the effect. He proposed the use of logic and experiments to support the link between cause and effect. The idea of suggesting a probable cause for some fact, then testing it through experiments, forms the basis of the modern scientific method.

Other Renaissance thinkers also explored the idea of method, but they took a different approach to the concept from Galileo's. The French educator Petrus RAMUS, for example, developed a method of inquiry that he claimed was useful in all fields of knowledge. However, his method was geared more toward teaching a subject than making new discoveries. Ramus's efforts inspired the English philosopher Francis BACON, who set out to create a complete system of thought that would make use of experimentation and inductive* reasoning. He believed his method would enable humans to find the causes of everything that occurred in the world of nature. Although Bacon's method did not work as well as he claimed, his insistence on experimentation set a standard for later scientists in England.