The question of our origins has been probably one of the oldest and most controversial issues faced throughout the history of science. Are humans merely creations of a greater being as written in religious books, or are humans just another creature that nature has evolved? One of the key issues to this dilemma is the limitation which exists within our universe to be able to explain either one of these theories because of insufficient abilities to measure or validate them.Different religions have offered several explanations and have had internal controversies which have disallowed one single explanation to be absolute and complete. Those who believe in the theory of evolution say that ...view middle of the document...
This method can be traced to Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist of the 1500s, who disproved every belief of the era by using this very method through repeated experiments that others were then able to reproduce and understand. But what is truly a scientific method? It can be defined as the approach to finding knowledge in science through experiments, observations and collection of information, which basically means finding the "answers," the facts one is looking for, and that can be repeated and reproduced by anybody. This brings us to the main steps of the scientific method: Observation, formulation of hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion. All these steps are fundamental to validate a research, and without them, results are considered useless.The first scientific approach would be to identify the problem or question posed, formulate hypothesis, which are assumptions or tentative answers yet unable to verify, observe tendencies, make controlled experiments that cancel effects of variables possibly involved in the equation and draw conclusions based on what has been observed.A good example on how the scientific method works is as simple as figuring out why a computer suddenly turns off. The hypothesis could be that maybe the power went off, or maybe a chord unplugged by accident, or maybe the computer just stopped functioning. Through observation of the phenomenon, and "experiments" such as trying to locate the possible cause through finding of what else has been turned off all of a sudden or not, one can reach a conclusion, test it, confirm or deny the hypothesis and can explain and verify it under the same circumstances or continue the research through trial and error.To delve a little more into the history of theories in science, a few examples can be traced back to several scientific theories that have been put forth and debated extensively through decades. Einstein's theory of relativity, Edward Witten's String theory, Charles Darwin's natural selection and origin of the species, and the theory of Creationism are good examples. A theory is a comprehensive hypothesis that has been proven through multiple observations, and over time widely accepted by the scientific community as valid, while as we explained earlier, a hypothesis is a tentative explanation. (Campbell, Reece and Simon, 2007, chapter 1, p.18). It's important to note that "a theory is incorrect when a false fact can be deduced from it." (Kent, Hall and Daily, 2000, p.156).One well known theory is Einstein's theory of relativity, E=MC². At the time he proposed this theory it was thought of as impossibility, even though he was able to proof mathematically that movement of an object was relative to the observer's observation point; hence the movement of an object is relative to the movement of the observer at a particular point in time. A less known theory is Edward Witten's String theory that attempted to explain the physical phenomena of particles, in which ...
