On the application of the scientific method in real life and activities

There is one amazing paradox in human culture. 300 years ago, a method of knowledge of reality called the “Scientific method”, which was amazing in terms of effectiveness, was invented. Today we see his achievements everywhere - in the form of an enormous development of science and technology. And what's the paradox, you ask? And the paradox is that this method, which gives such large-scale results, is mostly not used by most people!

This is really strange, but it is a fact. The devil already knows how many years the method has been invented of maximally effective interaction with reality (and tested by millions of experiments) - even by scientists, as a rule, it is not always used. Coming out of a scientific laboratory, scientists forget about the scientific method. About all the others and say nothing.
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In fact, most of the population of the planet still lives in the Middle Ages. To clarify what this means, I will first tell you what the scientific method actually is and how it originated.

Here it must be said that, up to a certain point, scientific and philosophical thought proceeded from very strange premises for a modern person. From the fact that there is an ancient knowledge, wise and final, on which only one should rely, and the world should be learned, making logical conclusions from this knowledge. And nothing more.

Ancient knowledge, I will say straight away, implied not only the Bible, but also ancient teachings - for example, Aristotle. However, this did not help much to the cause - because the ancient philosophers knew, of course, far from everything.

And somewhere in the 17th century, various philosophers and scientists led by Francis Bacon, figuratively speaking, cried out - “Well, you can’t do that!”. Well, you can not know the world, exclusively interpreting the ancient knowledge and with varying success trying to apply them to reality. It is necessary to act on the contrary - to look at reality, study the real facts, summarize them, and from these results build a science. Assuming only real facts, ascertained in practice, as a criterion of truth - and not at all authorities, however ancient they may be.

So, actually, a scientific method appeared, as we know it today.

And its essence, as we see, is amazingly simple. We observe the real facts - in nature or in specially created experiments. We try to discover certain patterns in these facts. From these patterns we construct hypotheses and check how much they allow to predict new facts, as well as how much they coincide with those already known. And then either we find out that the hypothesis corresponds to the facts - which means it is true. And does not correspond - it means false. Everything.

(Yes, I know that there are many subtleties, I know about scientific verification, falsification, postpositivism, Popper criterion and other interesting things. I’ll omit all of this in this article, because all these ideas just clarify the basic idea).

Well, well, you ask, this is all very interesting and it seems that it really works in science. And our ordinary life has something to do with it?

And with all. Because your life is as much a part of reality as any other part of reality. So, with the help of the scientific method, it can be perfectly known.

Take something banal, for example, anger. Yes, anger, emotion, and how is it actually worse than gravity or electricity? Let's explore it.

How can you study anger? Just as I described above. In the beginning - to collect the facts. That is, in what cases you are angry, when anger increases, when it is weakened, how long it lasts. And many many others. The more facts, the better. There are never too many of them.

And then we will try to determine the patterns of your anger. Let's see what it depends on. From people? From events? From thoughts? From memories? What is stronger? What is weaker? And what depends on her?

Identified? Perfectly. But that is not all. Now check what is determined in practice. Suppose when you, according to your hypotheses, should or should not get angry, and check it out. So you can understand the real reasons for your anger are different from the contrived.

Well, well, you learned all this, but what is the practical use? Yes, it is exactly the same as in science. It lies in the fact that what we have learned, we can manage.

People once did not know what caused lightning. She was attributed to the gods. And they tried to control the lightning, praying to these gods. It helped somehow not very much.

But then people, using the scientific method, learned the laws of electricity - and began to control the lightning. They built lightning rods, electric generators, electromagnets and everything else. And does all this work? More than.

So, finding out, for example, the laws of the work of anger - you can begin to influence the causes of anger. And be angry less. Or more. This is more convenient for you. In fact, here science goes into engineering - which, by the way, has also existed for many years and has been well studied.

And now I will explain why many still live as in the Middle Ages. Because they don’t even try to apply the scientific method to anything. No, people act like before Bacon - they rely on authorities, stereotypes, dogmas, on various outdated information. And trying, based on their stereotypes, to interact with reality. It turns out ... well, as with lightning and gods. With varying success or without it.

This explains why many of the tips that you, or your beliefs, ideas, ideas often gave you or did not work the way you expected or did not work at all. Why do you so often feel frustrated and frustrated. Yes, simply because you assume your ideas about reality as truth, without testing them in practice. Without applying to them the scientific method.

And if they applied, they would find that a huge number of your current ideas about reality are simply wrong. They are contrary to the facts, contrary to practice. And therefore they should be simply discarded. And create new views. Proven by scientific method. The most effective method that mankind has invented in its entire history.

This is, in fact, quite an amazing feeling - when you discover how deluded you were before. How blindly did he envision his strange ideas, directly contradicting facts and experience, the only possible reality. How strongly he considered his beliefs to be the absolute truth - although science directly tells us that no beliefs can claim to be absolute truth. None Never. You can only talk about beliefs, confirmed by facts. And only as long as they are confirmed. And if they begin to disprove, beliefs should either be abandoned or their scope limited.

And what a great curiosity, what a huge interest arises at the moment when you realize that you can learn everything! Well, that is, in general - everything. Everything in the world. And it will never be boring again - because knowledge seems to be infinite. And at the same time it is clear how it, knowledge of it, is done.

That is, any person, in fact, can learn to live much more effectively than he is living now. At the same time, he doesn’t even need any secret esoteric knowledge - you just take a ready-made, well-established scientific method, and use it. Stupidly by analogy. And the results from it can be obtained very quickly.

Therefore - I highly recommend to all people in the world to begin, finally, to study how science works. And apply science to your own life. After all, if with the help of science, mankind has split an atom and flew into space, perhaps it can improve your life a little?