How the Great Scientists Reasoned: The Scientific Method in Action

By Gary G. Tibbetts

The scientific method is one of the most basic and essential concepts across the sciences, ensuring that investigations are carried out with precision and thoroughness. The scientific method is typically taught as a step-by-step approach, but real examples from history are not always given. This book teaches the basic modes of scientific thought, not by philosophical generalizations, but by illustrating in detail how great scientists from across the sciences solved problems using scientific reason. Examples include Christopher Columbus, Joseph Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, Michael Faraday, Wilhelm Röntgen, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr. Written by a successful research physicist who has engaged in many studies and years of research, all in the attempt to extract the secrets of nature, this book captures the excitement and joy of research. The process of scientific discovery is as delightfully absorbing, as complex, and as profoundly human as falling in love. It can be a roller coaster ride of despairing valleys and exhilarating highs. This book sketches the powerful reasoning that led to many different discoveries, but also celebrates the "ah-ha moments" experienced by each scientist, letting readers share the thrilling instant when each scientist reached the critical revelation in his research.

• Places the scientific method in context using historical examples
• Suitable for both scientists and non-scientists looking to better understand scientific reasoning
• Written in an engaging style with clear illustrations and referencing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Dec 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9780123985040

Book preview

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1

Introduction

Humanity’s Urge to Understand

In the beginning was the book of Nature. For eon after eon, the pages of the book turned with no human to read them. No eye wondered at the ignition of the sun, the coagulation of the earth, the birth of the moon, the solidification of a terrestrial continent, or the filling of the seas. Yet when the first primitive algae evolved to float on the waters of this ocean, a promise was born—a hope that someday all the richness and variety of the phenomena of the universe would be read with appreciative eyes.

Perhaps the earliest traces of human thought remaining are works of art depicting animals and the hunt and celebrating fertility, but our earliest record of human speculative thought comes to us from stories told and retold around the campfires of the ancient world. These myths often were primarily concerned with the facts of nature. How was the earth created, and what was the starry firmament? Why did winter follow summer? What was the rainbow? These myths testify that deep within our nature is the urge to understand.

In the pages to follow, we will see that the understanding of our physical world begins with something related to the myth: the hypothesis. They share a common ancestor because a hypothesis can be little more sophisticated than a flat-out guess about what causes a phenomenon. In the thousands of years it took human curiosity to evolve from mythical fabrication to experimentally supported conclusions, the hypothesis has evolved to be the primal tool for uncovering the deepest secrets of nature. We will describe how our predecessors evolved helpful and sophisticated modes of thought to test and distinguish valid hypotheses from invalid.

Chapter 2 will present a brief summary of the elements of the scientific method, which I expand to include the modes of thinking used by scientists to discern the truths of the natural world. Mastery of the known facts of any problem must be carefully coupled with a degree of skepticism about previous explanations. Rigorous intellectual integrity demands that one recognizes how self-interest can strap blinders on us to prematurely terminate reasoned inquiry. Chapter 2 will describe how scientists evaluate, test, reject, and modify hypotheses. Furthermore, it will list warning signs that allow the detection of sterile hypotheses that must be molded into useful ones.

But this is not primarily a book on the theory of the scientific method; I have read several of these and find them dry as dust and less gripping than a telephone directory. By contrast, the actual process of scientific discovery is a roller coaster of exhilarating highs and deflating valleys. It is as delightfully absorbing, as complex, and as profoundly human as falling in love. To properly focus attention on these creative aspects, the majority of the book is comprised of biographical sketches that illustrate important aspects of the methods of scientific discovery. They are not complete biographies and are not intended to illuminate the full character of each scientist because they are focused on the thought processes that led each in his intellectual journey. Sketches of eight scientists intended to illuminate different and important facets of the process of scientific discovery are included.

As I began to compile these stories I found the keenest pleasure in reliving each moment of discovery, each eureka flash of enlightenment. Many scientists have enjoyed such experiences—times when all the conflicting pieces of the puzzle neatly slide together to make a beautifully coherent whole. A mixture of emotions can overpower the mind at such times: reverence for the beauty and harmony of nature, pride of achievement for unraveling such a knot, and gratitude for the privilege of being the first to appreciate and enjoy such a mystery. Just for a moment, the researcher has heard the strains of the music of the spheres, as chords hidden since the formation of the universe resonate just for him or her.

Just as the spy novelist revels in creating a fantasy world of dapper but deadly secret agents or the author of bodice-ripping romances savors a heroine’s moments of passion, I have delighted in re-creating these moments of discovery. So in the end I have written this book to relive and to share these all too rare instances so precious to the scientist and so useful to the rest of humanity. I hope you will enjoy them too.

My choice of subjects is not as capricious as it might appear. I apologize that the selection does not meet the demands of political correctness, as all eight subjects are white European men. Two of them are chemists, one an explorer, and the remaining five physicists. These eight men, however, were chosen because they illustrate well the different modes and problems of scientific thought.

Chapter 3 describes the scientific aspects of the career of Christopher Columbus, who most people would classify as an explorer rather than a scientist. However, chronicling the struggles of this giant of discovery in a century groping its way out of the medieval and into the Renaissance can convey useful lessons about scientific thinking. Because Columbus could not amend his original hypothesis that he would reach Japan by sailing 2500 miles to the west, despite many contrary facts he uncovered during his four voyages, his valid claim to the discovery of two continents new to European civilization was weakened and his life ended in frustration.

Chapters 4 to 6 describe the discoveries of the experimental scientists Priestly, Lavoisier, Faraday, and Röntgen. These giants beautifully exemplify the productive modes of scientific thought described in Chapter 2. The demise of phlogiston theory described in Chapter 4 is another cautionary tale for all scientists illustrating the lengths to which the human mind can go to retain very flawed conventional wisdom. The researches of Faraday described in Chapter 5 are glimpses into the mind and procedures of a peerless laboratory scientist. Faraday’s discoveries were spectacular, but this genius at synthesizing information did commit a misstep when he tried to merge the forces of electromagnetism and gravitation. Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays described in Chapter 6 is a tale not told often enough, illustrating how a careful and thoughtful observer can discover what Mother Nature had been shouting for years to a host of scientists who did not listen carefully enough.

Each of these four experimentalists showed a fertile skepticism that enabled them to push beyond the boundaries set by the past. Each was capable of communing with Nature in their laboratories: listening, testing, discarding, imagining, and formulating more accurate hypotheses.

Nevertheless, each of them might be criticized, for they all made errors of fact and judgment. The demands of truth are very high, the laws of nature can be intimidatingly complex, and human ego makes our minds frail. However, even though none achieved perfection, these giants made monumental contributions to human welfare.

In Chapters 7 to 9, we vault into the twentieth century. In the first two decades of this new age, the increasing scope and specialization of the scientific community created three outstanding theorists: Planck, Einstein, and Bohr. They fed off the growing vitality of the scientific enterprise, surveying the most exciting experiments, picking out the results that could not fit the classical understanding of physics, and assembling the complex framework of quantum mechanics to rationalize the hitherto inexplicable. These giants knew each other, and both Bohr and Einstein expanded Planck’s original quantum hypothesis in ways that he initially found troubling. The foundations these three men built for the new quantum theory led to the most bizarre, sophisticated, and successful theory conceived by the mind of man.

I originally hoped that this book could be written with only a bare minimum of equations. However, I found that adding some mathematics to Chapters 7 to 9 enriched their story considerably. Readers not having the background to understand these equations are encouraged not to despair, because I have tried very hard to incorporate the meaning underlying the mathematics within the text.

In the short conclusions chapter, I tie together some of the disparate threads of scientific thinking and apply them to our current world.

After you have read this book, you would have traced the reasoning of some of the most independent, careful, and concise thinkers who have ever lived as they worked their way through very knotty conundrums. Each had to carefully winnow valid observations and data from a cloud of confusion and blunders. If you can assimilate, even to a small extent, the habits of thought they cultivated, then you will find that solving the problems of your own personal life—who to vote for, what investment decisions to make, which medical procedures to trust, what career to prepare for, and so on—will be founded on a more rational basis.

Good luck!

2

Elements of Scientific Thinking

Skepticism, Careful Reasoning, and Exhaustive Evaluation Are All Vital

2.1 Science Is Universal

Suppose you travel to an exotic location like Indonesia, Israel, or Japan. Compared to the United States, the languages are completely different. The predominant religions have little in common. The governments are structured differently, and the political beliefs of the average citizen are widely divergent from those of your homeland. Family life will have a different flavor. Yet if you enter a local university in each of these countries and examine the content taught in a department of chemistry or biology or physics, you will find little variation in point of view or subject matter.

This is not just a question of a university classroom being a sophisticated locale. Even within the United States, there are broad differences in the content and teaching in the fields of religion, psychology, English literature, and political science, but very little divergence of subject matter in the teaching of chemistry or geology or physics.

In the pages to follow, I will argue that this broad agreement on what is accepted scientific theory is an affirmation that scientists have devised effective means for winnowing out errors and retaining theories that contain a valid description of Nature. The key element that has allowed this progress is that the hard sciences must agree with experimental and observational reality.

To capsulize and oversimplify the extreme case of the difference between scientists and politicians: the scientist is accustomed to seeing her ideas proved wrong and subsequently modifying them, whereas a politician never admits that her policies are wrong and carefully minimizes and disguises any necessary alterations of an original position.

2.2 Maintaining a Critical Attitude

We all have learned from painful experience how often people prevaricate and dissemble. Blind reliance that others will tell us the truth is a demonstrably risky policy.

More frustrating yet, people who really love us may not always tell us the truth. Even those who sincerely have our best interest at heart may distort the simple truth, deny events that actually happened, or fabricate untruths that they feel are important for us to believe. Highly respected world leaders have been known to deliberately lie to their countrymen.

Sometimes these distortions are forgivable. You may scan all of Abraham Lincoln’s writings about the American Civil War and you will never read that the war was about slavery. It was about preserving the Union. Perhaps in Lincoln’s mind the two were inextricably intertwined, but a clear, simple description of this war would have to include the observation that in the Northern states the idea of slavery had become so onerous that allowing its practice in the United States of America had become unacceptable. We can understand that during the entire war, Lincoln cherished the hope that the hostilities could be ended on terms acceptable to the South and that soft-pedaling the slavery issue would give him vital political flexibility. But he was not relating the clear simple truth that the American Civil War was about slavery. The fact is that Lincoln was more committed to something he felt was more important than truth: preserving the Union and conserving the lives of American soldiers.

A more sinister compromise with truth is visible in the responses of the leaders of the Catholic Church to the problem of pedophile priests. Although I am not a Catholic, I am convinced that the Church is staffed and led by well-meaning and generally trustworthy men who believe that their religious efforts are vital to a suffering and sinful world. But the problem is that their primary commitment is to the institution of the Church itself. And for many who climb in the Church hierarchy, commitment to the institution of the Church can become more important than commitment to the truth. After many years of cover-ups, we have learned that bishops, cardinals, and even popes were far less committed to preserving the sanctity of our children than protecting the reputation of their church.

Despite the prevalence of mendacity in our human relationships, science is itself a search for truth and can thrive only in an atmosphere of forthrightness and candor.

In most scientific areas, at least, truth can be suppressed only so long. There is a natural vitality to truth; it is like a mighty Mississippi whose rolling current daily scours and cleanses its bed. In times of flood, its unstoppable torrents wash away deep-rooted misconceptions, superstitions, and distortions. Truth is nurtured by unbiased and judicious thought, and clarity and straightforwardness make truths powerful and easy to