History Of Scientific Thought Essay

It has been argued that science is one of the earliest disciplines on earth. However, what many people may not realize is that the terms science, scientists and scientific methods were coined in the 19th century. Before this time, science was viewed as a part of philosophy coexisting with other branches of philosophy such as logic and metaphysics. Although the term science was coined in the 19th century, the process of human inquiry can be traced to as early as 3rd century BC, and several instance of scientific progress have been recorded since then.
In the early times, human inquiry was aligned along theological concepts whose basis was faith. However, this notion was challenged by early Greek philosophers (such as Aristotle and Plato) who argued that the world could be understood accurately through systematic reasoning. This assertion saw the birth of rationalism in the 3rd century BC. Rationalism was held for a number of years, before, a British philosopher by the name, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) came up with another school of thought which reasoned that knowledge could only be derived from observing the real world.
Bacon popularized scientific methods of inquiry (the Baconian method) and this saw the birth of empiricism. The main foundation of empiricism was the use of inductive methods of scientific inquiry. Empiricism often clashed with rationalism, and this divided philosophers along the two schools of thought during the middle ages. Philosophers like David Hume and John Locke sided with the empiricists while philosophers like Rene Descartes sided with the rationalists. Other scientists like Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton tried to fuse the two philosophies together.
In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant took the initiative to resolve the dispute between empiricism and rationalism, and this led to the birth of idealism. At almost the same period, Auguste Comte created a new doctrine which harmonized rationalism with empiricism. This new doctrine was called positivism. Comte reasoned that while theories can be created through reasoning, they can only be authenticated through observations. Comte’s emphasis on verification strengthened the use of scientific methods to validate scientific claims, and this initiated the separation of modern science from philosophy.
Nonetheless, positivist accounts were rejected by some quarters who insisted that positivism could be equated to research methods such as surveys and experiments. In the late 20th century, British philosopher Karl Popper faulted both the positivist and antipositivist models, and reasoned that human knowledge is not based on rigid foundations rather it is based on presumptions that cannot be proven conclusively. This is a view which is now known as post-positivism and it is based on the rationale that it is not possible to verify the truth, but it is possible to reject the false beliefs.