Scientific Methodology

Abstract

Scientific achievement is a phrase that has attracted growing attention over the last 100 years, although at first it was treated with considerable awe by the humble layman who left scientists to discover and hand down ‘Laws of Nature’ to their fellow men, who had lesser training. As mechanization and automation have moved increasingly into the daily life of the people who previously were the energy units of industry, it has become necessary for everyone to be more involved with scientific thinking and less awed by its mysteries. General science is seen as a suitable subject for basic education, and schoolchildren now take the discoveries of physics, chemistry and biology in their stride: they are involved, at first hand, in classroom experiments that illustrate the laws that a few years ago were accepted as gospel but rarely experienced in any meaningful way by the general public. People are more aware of the methods that were used in uncovering these facts and feel less bothered by the exceptional cleverness of those who discovered them.