ABSTRACT
The scientific method is supposed to be rational, and to give us objective knowledge of the world. To say that scientific knowledge is objective means that it is not the product of individual whim, and it deserves to be believed by everyone, regardless of their other beliefs and values. So, for example, if it is an objective fact that smoking causes cancer, or that all metals expand when heated, then it ought to be believed equally by atheists and theists, by conservatives and liberals, and by smokers and non-smokers, if these people are to be rational. Our search for the scientific method has led us from the naïve inductivism of Bacon, which is an account of how to develop scientific theories, to the falsificationism of Popper, which is exclusively concerned with the testing of scientific theories once they have been proposed.
