Definition of "scientific method" [scientific method]

• The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "However, sometimes the word research is by necessity employed in the general everyday context of the word because it is the clearest way to convey the fact that the scientific method can be applied in our personal lives as well as in university laboratories."
• "Indeed, what we call the scientific method is a collection of conventions and procedures that have been designed to combat our extraordinary capacity to deceive ourselves in the interest of submission to something higher than our own immediate emotional or intellectual comfort—namely, truth."
• "Richard Simon, who gave so vigorous an impulse to Biblical studies in France, and who, if Bossuet had not forestalled him, would possibly have originated a scientific method of exegesis, profited by the commentaries of the man he called major et praestantior theologus."