Scientific Methodology
El método científico integra observación, experimentación y formulación de hipótesis, evolucionando desde la filosofía clásica hasta las ciencias modernas.
The methodological foundations of science can be traced back to the philosophical schools of antiquity, with particular relevance for the Western development of classical Greek thought. The principles of the Greek philosophical attitude toward science, although significantly evolved, still retain part of their validity today. It is therefore not surprising that one of the basic principles of the scientific method—defining science as a system of propositions to which the totality of experience can be reduced without losing generality—derives from the axiomatic structures of Platonic and Aristotelian logic within Hellenic culture.
The static view of science upheld by ancient and medieval scholars, according to which scientific systems and laws were derived from deductive syllogisms based on abstract premises, underwent substantial transformation with the contributions of seventeenth-century physics, a pioneer in the construction of methodological criteria. The main innovations, associated with figures such as Galileo and Newton, emphasized the central role of observation and experience in the formulation of scientific theories. At the same time, the development of techniques and instruments was recognized as a fundamental contribution to the advancement of knowledge, as illustrated by the use of telescopes and microscopes.
The cycle of understanding cognitive experience was synthesized in the so-called hypothetico-deductive method, which derived from the extrapolation of observations and experiments a set of hypotheses upon which the classical deductive system was applied to express the particular laws of phenomena. This methodology significantly advanced the natural sciences and led to the replacement of the language previously used in science—aligned with philosophical logic—by a concise symbolism inspired by mathematical formalism.
Nevertheless, a further qualitative shift in the conception of the scientific method occurred with the incorporation of social and human dimensions into the domain of science. The inclusion of disciplines such as sociology and economics, as well as the recognition of history as a scientific field—systematically rejected as such until the nineteenth century—required overcoming a fundamental prejudice: the notion that scientific objects and phenomena must belong to the realm of the universal, a domain in which the particularities and unpredictability of human behavior in social contexts were not easily accommodated.
The identification of common ground between the natural and human sciences increased with the hypotheses of quantum theory, according to which the smallest components of matter, or elementary particles, do not obey strictly causal laws but exhibit, in their individual evolution, an uncertain behavior analogous in its effects to that of beings acting under their own will.
Thus, the principles of statistics and mathematical probability became shared tools across all scientific disciplines, symbolizing the unity of their analytical frameworks and objectives. Several general principles currently govern scientific methodology. The need for a formal and universal symbolic language of communication is widely accepted. Observation and experience are granted a central role as primary sources of scientific knowledge, from which hypotheses and general theories are derived through inductive processes. Scientific doctrines are subject to continuous revision and evolution in light of new discoveries and theoretical contributions.
Finally, the influence of the researcher’s activity and the quality of available instruments on the results of experiments and scientific theories is acknowledged. The history of philosophical and methodological positions in science, together with aspects related to measurement systems, reflects an early development in the history of thought, characterized by the emergence of foundational criteria for classification, experimentation, and the establishment of working methods, which acted as driving forces behind scientific doctrines and maintained a prominent role during the rise of the social sciences.
From a historical perspective, the first natural science with a defined and independent identity was astronomy, which expanded its field of study to the limits of the known universe through a gradual enrichment over centuries. Mechanics, with equally remote origins, evolved rapidly through the construction of devices that facilitated the understanding of equilibrium and stability in physical systems. Both disciplines—astronomy and mechanics—were ultimately revealed, following the formulation of the theory of universal gravitation in the eighteenth century, as two branches of a single phenomenon. The mutual attraction between material bodies explains both the harmonic order of celestial objects and the interactions of masses on the surface of the Earth.
