As a rule, I begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. I add that I ought to know, having been for a time at least, the only professor of this non-existent subject within the British commonwealth.
—Realism and the Aim of Science, Karl Popper, p. 5I assert that no scientific method exists in any of these three senses. To put it in a more direct way:
(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.
(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth of a scientific hypothesis, i. e., no method of verification.
(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is “probable”, or probably true.
—Realism and the Aim of Science, Karl Popper, p. 6I believe that the so-called method of science consists in this kind of criticism [severe]. Scientific theories are distinguished from myths merely in being criticizable, and in being open to modifications in the light of criticism. They can be neither verified nor probabilified.
—Realism and the Aim of Science, Karl Popper, p. 7This alleged but non-existent method [of science] is that of collecting observations and then “drawing conclusions” from them. It is slavishly aped by some historians who believe that they can collect documentary evidence which corresponding to the observations of natural science, forms the “empirical basis” for their conclusions.
This alleged method is one that can never be put into effect: you can neither collect observations nor documentary evidence if you do not first have a problem.
—Objective Knowledge, Karl Popper, p. 186
Courtesy: Philosopher/photographer Laszlo Bencze