By Sheldon Greaves One of the things about the history of
science that has always puzzled me is the development of the
scientific method. The rise of something close to modern science
starts with Aristotle, who broke with his teacher Plato and
argued that the best way to understand the world was not to sit
and speculate about it, but to go out and actually observe what
was going on. This is a point too often glossed over by moderns
who like to pick on Aristotle, who actually got a lot of things
right, in spite of his mistakes. The real breakthrough in the
scientific method, we are told, comes when Roger Bacon, a
Franciscan Friar, first articulates a cycle of observation,
hypothesis, and experimental science. Bacon spelled this out in
his Opus Tertium, which he wrote on commission for Pope Clement
IV in 1265-66. Going back to the Greeks and Romans, one hears
criticisms that their work was hampered because they never came
up with the idea of experimental science. When I hear or read
such things, there is the se