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This article throws light upon the top seven modes by which scientific knowledge is adopted. The modes are: 1. Reliance on Empirical Evidence 2. Use of Relevant Concepts 3. Commitment to Objectivity 4. Ethical Neutrality 5. Generality 6. Predictions based on Probability 7. Public Methodology Affording Testing of Conclusions through Replication.
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 1. Reliance on Empirical Evidence:
The man of science is firmly committed to the belief that “truth” can always be established on the basis of evidence that our sense organs can get at. Of course, science never expects us to reach the ultimate truths. “At their best her theories are not and never pretend to be more than diagrams to fit, not even the possible facts, but simply the known facts.”
The scientist believes that the sole source of our knowledge is experience (i.e., data of senses) and that there are no universal and necessary truths from which valid existential inferences can be drawn. He further believes that since knowledge existing outside oneself is reached through experience, it must always be uncertain and tentative. All this is not to say that the scientific attitude is one of uncritical empiricism.
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It may be sensible to describe this attitude as critical empiricism, that is, the scientist does not accept uncritically whatever the sense datum presents before him. To this sense datum, he applies the screws of reason so as to comprehend its true character.
In other words, the man of science regards rational ideas as the guiding principles for making predictions or formulating explanations to be tested subsequently by observation, i.e., empirical evidence, now or at some point in future. Science does not accept a proposition derived from a given set of rational ideas as constituting a reliable proof of its validity or truth.
The scientist may be likened to a creative artist who fashions a block of marble into a statue. While the insights of reason would suggest the shape and form of the statue, the artist in this process of fashioning cannot afford to remain unconcerned with the grains on and the dimensions of the marble block (empirical data) except at his own peril.
It may be instructive to regard the development of science as a continuing dialectical process. This implies no commitment any special version of dialecticism, it simply takes account of the fact that what is required for the advancement of science is a continuing interplay between its logical frontiers rationalism and its experimental frontiers empiricism.
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The logical aspect is embodied in the doctrine which has generally been known as rationalism. Rationalism proceeds from the rational investigation of connections between concepts without special regard to the adequacy of the concepts of experience, developing formal structures in a free and creative way.
Empiricism in doctrine, proceeds from an empirical investigation of connections between events, without special regard to the significance of those events in any total scheme of things, accumulating factual information in a disciplined and receptive manner. Both these aspects are absolutely essential and scientific progress may be regarded as dialectical process of reciprocal feedback between them.
If empirical findings outrun logical constructions (theories, laws) science is at a loss; logical construction would have to catch up before the new empirical findings can be put in their place.
Conversely, if logical constructions go ahead of empirical investigation, that may not be regarded as so serious because there will always be a scope for something to come up in the empirical realm to fill the new breach in logical development and provide an interpretation for part of the structure that was not interpreted before.
But till such a time as it does so the logical construction is bound to remain a mere exercise of intellectual ingenuity.
The rationalists of old, interpreted science as a deductive system of propositions. For them, there stood at the head of the system, a set of self-evident propositions and from these, other propositions (theorems) could be derived by the process of reasoning.
At the other end are the avowed inductionists (empiricists) who believe that science must construct its axioms from the sense data relating to particulars by ascending continually till it finally arrives at the most general axioms.
Science operates on the twin wheels of deduction and induction, both equally germane to the goals of science. Deduction involves inferring from the premises or general statements some bits of information about the world. Deduction is a device for the discovery of the truth that lies concealed within a set of statements.
In fact, there is nothing new in deduction; all information contained in the conclusion is already contained in the premises. Nevertheless, it helps us to know and understand the world around us since it opens our eyes to the information that viewed otherwise, we would not get at. But the method of deduction is definitely limited by the facts ascertained empirically.
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The empirical method of extending one’s palm out of the window to see if it is raining, has the advantage of rendering us safe from false premises. But the advantage of the deductive method in the instant case is that one does not have to go out and get wet to arrive at the answer. It is to be noted that the deductive method is a method of getting information just as the empirical method of getting information.
In a sense, in established facts have more claims on being called ‘knowledge’ than inferences arrived at deductively. When an empirically established fact collides with a deduced proposition, deduction must yield to the power of empirical fact. As someone has said, “Many a beautiful theory has been slain by an ugly fact….”
The case in point may be variously illustrated. If a plane that theoretically would not fly at all, does fly despite the deduction to the contrary; the theory; the basis for deduction, in consequence, would have to be revised for, it is in error.
The conflict between deduction and empirical knowledge cannot, however, be settled so easily. Often the empirical facts are not so clear because measurements are uncertain. In such situation a strong deductive argument can be more persuasive.
If one of the major aims of science is explanation, the most usual pattern of explanation in science is evidently deductive, i.e., from a universal Statement or statements (laws or principles) together with some particular statement conditions (which together comprise the explanations) is deduced a statement describing the event to be explained.
The criteria for sound explanation of this sort are that deduction should genuinely involve the universal statement and that those statements and the statement conditions should be true as nearly as this can be ascertained.
Induction contrarily, moves from particulars to arrive at general propositions. It operates on faith that in the course of things for a long period is a basic regularity to warrant the inference that it will continue in the future too. Induction is thus a leap of faith. Many a philosopher has indicated the paradox of induction, pointing out that past experience can hardly be a secure guide to learning about nature of bodies.
Their secret nature and consequently all their effect and influences may change without any change in their sensible qualities. If this happens sometimes and with regard to some object, it will happen always with regard to all objects, they point out. And then there is no logical or process argument that would secure us against this supposition.
It is not inconceivable that new evidence might be forthcoming sometime and this would be the only way in which the theory of induction could escape the paradox. It may nevertheless be difficult to imagine what might constitute this new evidence.
If the premise and conclusion, in the logical case, are both known, some probability relations may be established between them and this may serve as a paradigm of an inductive inference.
But where the inductively arrived at prediction has not yet been observed, where the conclusion is not known, the situation is akin to trying to guess where rest of the triangle lies, if one is given one side. Without further information the task is impossible and the only way to get such information is to wait.
In absence of any other principle, we use, of course, the relation defined by previous sequence of observation but that the new case will conform to the pattern cannot be known until it has already done so. If we must not act except on certainty (not probabilities) we ought not act on religion, for it is not certain; but there are many things we do on uncertainty, sea voyages, battles, life insurance etc.
So often when we are working for tomorrow we are doing so on uncertainty, but we do not act unreasonably; for we work for an uncertainty according to the doctrine of chance or probability, i.e., that certain events are more likely to take place under certain circumstances.
Induction has an importance to us and hence we are more sympathetic to proposals for providing it with some logical foundation. But the truth or falsity of the principle of induction is not altered by such efforts, any more than the truth or falsity of the existence of God is. Electing one side or the other, as a result of logical calculation, is futile any way.
In any case, the best attitude to induction is to make induction the subject of a resolve that in the absence of any better guide to future behaviour, we would use the lessons of past experience. It would be absurd to pretend that we need reassurances about the course of events in the distant future, just as to pretend that we know anything about the course of events in the distant past.
Scientific observations have been made with some accuracy for perhaps 5,000 years; they have been made in quantity and variety only for about past 500 years.
An extrapolation on inductive grounds into the past suggests that these periods represent an almost infinitesimal fraction of the whole life of the universe. Further, all those observations have been made within a very thin spherical shell surrounding one planet of a small star (Sun).
It could be that an animal species thus restricted in time and space has, in fact, succeeded in discovering the principles according to which the universe operates, but were it not for the fact that human beings as ourselves are members of this species, we should find a priori probability of this rather small.
What success we can claim lies in our constructing a theoretical account of a hypothetical universe which, supposing it existed, would be like our universe in those places and at those times where the latter has been observed. We expect that in limited predictions, the fit of the theoretical universe to the real one shall still be fairly close. Saying something beyond this would be presumptuous.
The extreme empiricist view of the matter is that laws are arrived at by induction, often understood as, by simple enumeration. But here the problem of induction is bound to arise because there is no satisfactory way of explaining empirically how we can come to a position —”in all cases of acts or events” and not, all observed cases of acts or events.
But the failure of philosophers to solve the problem of induction has not prevented scientists from discovering laws. The fact is that the process of reasoning by which these laws are arrived at are not of induction at all. In fact, they start with universal propositions as hypotheses and when they have tested them, regard them as laws.
The hypothetic reasoning runs as follows:
(1) C is observed
(2) But C would follow only if A were true.
(3) Therefore, there is reason that A is true.
This is the sort of reasoning by which scientists often arrive at propositions of universal kind. It is quite often asked what the method of science is: whether induction or deduction? The only answer to this is: both.
Larrabee beautifully scores the point when he remarks, “If extreme rationalist (deductionist) is like a spider spinning out theories from within, the extreme empiricist (inductionist) is to be compared … to an ant which piles useless heaps of facts.”
Better than either the spider or the ant is the bee, which selectively gathers pollen and transforms it into honey….”We must remember that in actual scientific practice, induction and deduction are mingled in intricate ways. None could have put it better than Auguste Comte who said, “Induction for deduction with a view to construction….”
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 2. Use of Relevant Concepts:
Concepts are logical constructions or abstractions created from sense impressions, percepts and experiences. Concepts are the symbols that science works with; they constitute the linguistic apparatus of science. The language of science evolves in order to deal with problems of nature for which ordinary language has proved inadequate and wanting.
The world in which we live, and in which science is discovered at work, is apparent nature. The world which science describes is a creation of the human intellect which, while it may bear some resemblance to causal nature, is not identical with it.
Neither of these taken by itself is adequate to be considered in the role of the nature which is referred to in the definition of science. Science while it is the explanation of nature in its own terms, is not the explanation of apparent nature simply. What is explained is of course, discovered within apparent nature.
Were it not for this, we could have no access to it. But in order to be explained, it is rendered, even at the descriptive level, in characteristically scientific terms, and to that extent given entry into a new realm. Explanation, being logical relationship, lies entirely within the fields of thought and language.
The nature which is explained is given in perception, but rendered in conceptual and linguistic terms. The nature in whose terms the explanation is provided, on the other hand, is not given at all, but conjectured. There are, of course, events and processes to which, for one reason or another, we cannot gain access. These constitute causal nature, having a directly productive relationship with apparent nature.
The scientific procedure consists in evolving, defining and manipulating concepts or symbols with a view to contributing variously to the established corpus of systematic knowledge and/or to establish some new bit of knowledge.
In the passage from concrete sense data to the higher and higher levels of abstraction (hypotheses, theories and laws,) the man of science is constantly shaping, formulating, relying on and using relevant concepts.
Acquiring Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 3. Commitment to Objectivity:
The subjective-objective dichotomy is very old, going back in the history of thought beyond the foundation of most social and behavioural sciences. .In basic outline, this dichotomy suggests that there are two fundamentally’ opposite ways of theoretically treating man and his social organization.
One is the objective way, which views man and human society as basically similar to other aspects of the physical world. But social sciences typically prove too hazardous a ground in reference to which the object frame of reference as the right one for scientific knowledge is not totally acceptable.
The objective frame of reference has proved immensely useful for the physical sciences and it is not Surprising, given the success of the physical science that many have attempted to use this frame of reference to order and explain human behaviour.
Unfortunately, human behaviour often does not lend itself to the explanation used in the physical sciences. Human behaviour entails elements which may be called ideational, i.e., intentional, meanings, values and beliefs that cannot be described in terms of sensory dimensions.
The scientific method with its emphasis of objectivity bristles with problems in social sciences because of their direct or indirect concern with the study of man and his social organization. Human behaviour can be studied by other human observers alone and they are always likely to distort the facts being observed.
These facts, in turn, can be appreciated only on the intentional frame of reference which implies a lot of subjectivity thrown in. The nature of scientific method is such that a practitioner of science must set aside the subjective considerations; he must be prepared to suppress his hopes and his intuitions. The adoption of scientific approach may sometimes be painful but must be accorded due recognition.
The man of science is firmly committed to the belief that to go nearer to the goal of truth, he must “above all things … strive at self-elimination in his judgements and provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as his own.
Objectivity according to Galtung is a composite of:
(a) Intra-subjectivity;
(b) Inter-subjectivity.
The test of intra-subjectivity (or reliability) is that repeated observations of a constant phenomenon by the same observer will yield constant data while the test of inter-subjectivity consists in finding that repeated observations of a constant phenomenon by different observers will yield constant data. Inter-subjectivity is only a more adequate formulation of what is generally meant by the “objectivity” in science.
What is here involved is not only the freedom from personal or cultural bias or partiality, but even more fundamentally the requirement that the knowledge-claims of science be in principle capable of test (confirmation or disconfirmation, at least indirectly and to some degree) on the part of any person properly equipped with intelligence and the technical device of observation or experimentation.
The term inter-subjective stresses the social nature of the scientific enterprise. If there be any “truths” that are accessible only to privileged individuals, such as mystics or visionaries, that is, knowledge-claims which by their very nature cannot be independently checked by anyone else, then such “truths” are not of the kind we seek in the sciences.
The criterion of inter-subjective testability thus delimits the scientific from the non-scientific activities of man.
The scientist is thus expected to avoid at all costs what Francis Bacon termed the “false idols.” Social sciences present typical difficulties when it comes to translating into action, the pious wish to commit one-self to objective.
The critics have made much of this, some even going to the extent of insisting that the social sciences in view of their dubious objectivity would not qualify as sciences in the true sense of the term.
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 4. Ethical Neutrality:
What Faraday said of the philosopher, applies with equal force to the scientist, “(He) should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion but determined to judge by himself. He should not be biased by appearances; have no favorite hypotheses: be of no school, and in doctrine have no master.
He should not be a respecter of persons, but of things. Truth should be his primary object. A man of science is wedded to the faith that affectivity or commitment to an ideology is likely to distort his perspective and his judgement of things may thus become partisan or value-laden.
He certainly cannot afford the luxury of prejudices, i.e., believing what is comforting to believe. As Schroedniger says, “Science never imposes anything, science states. Science aims at nothing but making true and adequate statements about its objects.
However, since social sciences are called upon to explain aspects of human life, it is natural that these would be sensitive to any discussion about values and moral questions.
The argument for value-neutrality in social sciences makes out a case in support of it as follows:
“In order to discover what is and to properly conceptualize what is, it is necessary for social scientist to bring no personal prejudice or bias to his study.”
This does not mean that they should cease to be moral men, but for the purpose of description, for one’s desire to know what is, one must observe, describe and theories dispassionately. If disinterestedness is not maintained, what one believes may get in the way of what is. Dogma would interfere with thought.
The position on ethical neutrality arose curiously among those who adopted a subjective approach to social problems. It was felt that proper understanding of social structure, processes and behaviour demanded inference from data and an interpretative appreciation of abstract human relations. Value freedom was essential.
For the data to be obtained only in this way, the observer would have to hold his feelings in check for the duration of his observation and conceptualization. Since all data collection was subjective in nature, if there were no attempts at ensuring ethical neutrality, the social scientific ventures would surely raise controversies of opinion.
In sum, it was thought that the social scientist should describe things as they are, to the best of his ability, keeping moral values out. He needed techniques that would actually measure things he wants to measure and not fool himself by measuring something else.
But this kind of argument eventually led to a new attack on the proper goal of social theorising, one which blurs the distinction between explaining something and altering it.
The attack tends to point out that explaining things as they are amounts to putting an emphasis on the forces leading to stability and status quo and to distract people away from what might be possible by way of improvement.
People who argue in this vein often impugned the motives of social science theorists, arguing in effect, that ethical neutrality or value free interpretations of the social states of being were given by them in a calculated effort to justify them and keep them that way. Thus, the attack on value- neutrality usually ends up by advocating some biased viewpoint in social analysis.
If the objective of social theory is simply to explain what people do and to deduce these explanations from descriptive data organised into concepts then the problem of value-neutrality does not really arise because regardless of what one’s values are in regard to the subject-matter, the same results will continue to surface.
If on the other hand, explaining also means understanding or having insight into situations, perhaps in some unique human terms, then, the value problems will arise. When this happens, the distinction between social theory and bias gets blurred.
One becomes deliberately biased, then, at the risk of damage to the accuracy of his results but this risk is sometimes worth its price in terms of the quality of insights rendered possible. This is a more palatable stance for a numerically dominant section of the social scientists today.
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 5. Generality:
The conclusions of any import in science are generalizations, i.e., statements of general applicability. Typically, a series of observations of some class of objects, say X, are made by the scientist with a view to determining whether or not the members/items of this class have some property, say, Y.
The result of these observations may be a series of protocol sentences. ‘This X is Y’ and so on. To avoid confusion, the scientist tries to identify the Xs in some to keep them distinct from one another so that the sentences read: ‘X2 is Y,’ ‘Xn is Y.’ If among a large number of such observations no X is found which is not Y and also that no X-like objects are known which exhibit great variety in Y-like properties, the scientists tend in such situation to jump from the collection of singular statements about X1 X2-Xn to a universal statement about the class of Xs, viz., all Xs are Y. Such a leap is a generalization and the statement resulting from it, an empirical generalization. Generalizations emerge naturally after a large enough number of particular observations.
There can be no science without a belief in the inner harmony of the world and in the fact that reality may be grasped with the abstract theoretic or general construction.
Say Einstein and Infeld, “This belief is and will always remain the fundamental motive for all scientific creation. Throughout our efforts, in every dramatic struggle between old and new views, we recognise the eternal longing for understanding, the over firm belief in the harmony of our world continually strengthened by the increasing obstacles to comprehension.”
The scientist is constantly aware of his obligation to discover under the surface level of diversity, the thread of uniformity. Around a discovered uniformity, a logical class is constructed; about the class and its observed pattern a descriptive generalisation is formulated.
Scientists are alert to opportunities for combining comparable classes into a broader class and for formulating a wider and more abstract generalization to comprehend the discrete generalizations thereby embraced.
Thus are the scientific theories and propositions generated. Francis Bacon suggested, precisely this when he presented his new method NovumOrganum. Bacon advocated the method of constructing axioms from senses and particulars by ascending continually and gradually till the most general axioms are finally arrived at.
It is obvious that sciences differ in respect of the levels of generalization attained. More mature a science, the greater its generalizing potential. This has been conveyed with amazing felicity by Medawar.
Medawar observes, “… the factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, therefore in a sense annihilated by general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances — the, tyranny of the particular. We need no longer record the fall of every apple.”
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 6. Predictions Based on Probability:
The principal aspects of the scientific activity are classification which leads to description, explanation which leads to understanding and prediction which leads to control. The human attempt to anticipate and therefore control events relies on the ability of science to predict, i.e., to obtain knowledge of future events.
Prediction is just a special type of generalization; one from the past to the future. Prediction is always a leap of faith for there is no guarantee that tomorrow will be like today.
It is one’s judgement and depth of knowledge about the subject matter which lends support to the supposition based on what happened in the past, that same thing will take place in the future; prediction is reasonable to make if our assumption is sensible that the past and future belong to the same continuum, i.e., the conditions which held in the past will obtain in the future, too.
“The prediction that the sun will come up tomorrow morning is implicitly a statement that tomorrow morning comes from the same universe as have all mornings in the past.”
Reliable predictions can well be made even when changes in conditions are bound to occur if one knows the important conditions that created the trend are changing in a certain way.
Since the past is never a guarantee of the future and prediction is not just a mechanical extrapolation, the safer basis of projections of an observed trend onto the future is an understanding of the various forces that underlie the process. Prediction shares this aspect with all generalizations: from the known to the unknown.
The usefulness of some generalizations in prediction naturally depends on the scientist’s ability to trace out the sequence of propositions embodied in the general principle faster than nature traces out the sequence of causes, so that the scientist gets there first.
The man of science believes that predictions about phenomena are possible and must rest on a solid basis of the trend repeatedly observed and the probability that very same trend would manifest itself in terms of some concrete results in the future too.
The attempt to anticipate events and hence, to control them relies on the ability of science to predict. Predictions cannot be derived by deduction from any “self-evident” or “ultimate” truths.
The tincture of science liberates man from the load of prejudices. Without it, the world tends to appear definite, obvious, common objects, would arouse no questions and familiar possibilities get contemptuously rejected. It is thus clear that the scientific expectations or predictions are grounded in the established knowledge about the order among facts.
It is well to bear in mind that these expectations may not always come true. If they do not, the scientist is under an obligation to research the corpus of knowledge or theory which initially afforded the basis for predictions and suitably amend it or even reject it. It is a part of the scientific attitude that pronouncements of science do not claim to be certain but most probable on present evidence.
Probability reflects a state of the mind, best characterizes not negatively, as his ignorance of the future but positively as his expectation with respect to it. As Feynman says, “Scientific knowledge is body of statements of varying degrees of certainty, some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.”
It is typical of social sciences that they have a far lower predictability compared to the natural ones. The reasons are obviously the complexity of subject matter inadequacy at control, etc. It is often said of the social sciences that the predictions made by them are hedged with so many preconditions (such as the well-known, “other things being equal” (Ceteris Paribus), that they are denuded of any practical worth.
The much heard of distinction between the “exact” and “inexact” science stems from this though the usage ‘exact’ science is itself tautological, since all sciences are as exact as possible.
It has now been generally agreed that the social sciences though relatively inexact are “sciences” nevertheless and that central criterion of conferring scientific status on any branch of study should rightly be its method of study rather than the nature of results it comes out with.
In other words, a science would refer to the branch of study which has progressed to a point where its analysis reveals a logical structure, that is, its categories of classification, definitions and rules of correspondence are as free as possible from vagueness and ambiguity. Given time, social sciences might also vastly improve their predictive prowess.
Adopting Scientific Knowledge: Mode # 7. Public Methodology Affording Testing of Conclusions through Replication:
Science is a public institution practising a public methodology. A scientist has to make known to others how he arrived at the conclusion he did. This way alone can the scientist expose his own methods and conclusions of his research to critical scrutiny.
Criticism, according to Karl Pearson, is “the very life-blood of science.” It is through such criticism alone that science as an on-going historical institution continually improves upon the means and methods of inquiry — an obligation that every true scientist shares with the rest.
Furthermore, such criticisms signal at the right moment the drawing of unwarranted conclusions which in turn might bring about considerable harm considering the fact that we, as of now, depend so very much on the products of science.
Science is a collective, co-operative endeavour geared to the discovery of facts and it is, as pointed out by Dewey, “a method of knowing which is self-corrective in operation, that learns from failures as from successes.”
Unless the method of scientific inquiry is made public, it would not be possible for the fellow scientists (and critics) to replicate the initial inquiry to verify if the same conclusions are reached by recourse to the methods in question.
Subsequent replications lend added credibility and support to conclusions of inquiries if these replications arrive at the same conclusions (assuming, of course, that similar mistakes of method do not get repeated).
These are the solid bedrocks on which the corpus of science rests and from which it advances into many directions. As has just been pointed out, frequentative verification of conclusions is basic requirement of science.
This requirement brings to the fore one of the most central aspects of research; for, etymologically, research means repetitive search. Such repetitive searches may lend confirmation to established conclusions in the field, help propose certain modifications in them or even invalidate them. We will do well to remember that invalidation, no less than verification of propositions is an important contribution to science.
A word about replication or repeatability since the repeatability criterion cannot be smoothly applied in the realm of social sciences. The requirement of scientific research in regard to replication may be simply laid down as follows. The researcher must describe his empirical work in such a way that other people could exactly know what he did. The problem is here.
The more the observer interprets what he has seen the less repeatable the study. Understandably, there is much scope in social science for the researchers to interpret their observations before recording them for subsequent presentation.
Hence the subjective or impressionistic elements may be so strong that replication in the desired sense is not possible. For example, different observers may come to different assessments of the kind of people certain tribal are, owing to different impressions gained by them in the course of their living with them.
Modern science in contradiction to ancient science is characterised by a certain measure of tentativeness with which it holds its conclusions. New data may invalidate them any moment.
Developed science has removed the dogmatic arrogance of those who have never travelled the region of liberating doubt. It has kept alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in unfamiliar contexts. Frequentative tests or verification are a necessary condition for this.
It was pointed out at the outset that for a proper appreciation of the nature and content of research a thorough understanding of the scientific method is called for. In the preceding pages the salient features of scientific method were discussed at some length.
An understanding of the scientific method for a student of theory and practice of research was thought necessary in as much as research is as Best puts it, “is the more formal systematic, intensive process of carrying on the scientific method of analysis.” Formal aspects of the scientific method will become clearer as the following pages unfold the steps involved in doing research.