(October 1, 2009 at 4:45 am)Arcanus Wrote: The interesting thing is that a restrictive view like yours disqualifies quite a number of fields accepted as science (e.g., anthropology) because the very nature of their subject precludes certain of those steps, sometimes for definitional reasons (e.g., scientific research involving history or prehistory), sometimes for ethical reasons (e.g., sociologists can't really experiment on people), and so forth. The steps are applicable for physics, chemistry, etc., but should the sociologist stop calling herself a scientist?
Arcanus,
Remeber I just took the first page I googled and posted it up because I felt it was fine for the purposes of giving a basic idea of the scientific method. In my answer to you I made it clear that there was more to science than just that one list (Meta studies for example). If you look over the list again I'm pretty sure you will agree that if you modified step four to include the use of previously gathered data to arrive at a conclusion, that it will then accomodate the other areas of science that you mentioned. Really the definition is only narrow because of step four, which I admit does make the method too restrictive. I would agree with the use of secondary data to draw conclusions as anthropology, sociology, and psychology often rely on.
What other steps do you have issue with? I only see a problem with step four.
Rhizo
