Everyone should be able to answer this excellent question because it is used by everyone.
In essence, the scientific method is a straightforward iterative process that results in knowledge about reality, or the capacity to anticipate future events:
0. You have a set of predictive hypotheses, or you have some knowledge of reality but not all of it.
1. You come up with a brand-new, more general, or simpler, more consistent hypothesis about reality.
2. You conduct NEW MEASUREMENTS TO VALIDATE THE HIPPOSITION'S PREDICTIONS up till you have identified the domains in which it succeeds and fails.
3. You now have a better understanding of reality, including when, if ever, that hypothesis is true. TO ENSURE THE MAXIMUM USEFULNESS OF PREDICTIONS, YOU UPDATE THE SET OF HYPOTHESIS.
4.REPEAT
The first important lesson from this is that science is all about foretelling the future. Science is helpful because of this. It must be consistent, or it cannot contradict itself, in order to be predictive, as forecasts that contradict one another are useless. Math is employed in science because consistency is required. The consistent language of information processing is math.
The second important lesson is that science is a body of hypotheses, theories, and conjectures whose applicability is continually improved by the above-described perpetual scientific process. Because the hypotheses have been independently tested as many times separately over extended periods of time as is practically conceivable, we are more certain than anything else about many of these hypotheses. Nothing else has undergone so extensive testing.
Unknown third component of the scientific process is that new theories must be simpler or more broadly applicable before they can be deemed superior. A theory of the gaps, as demonstrated by, for instance, religion over the ages, might retreat to an increasingly narrower area of validity that has yet to be proven if this criteria is not met, making it impossible to get rid of outdated notions.
The importance of validation is a fourth fundamental insight. More validation is always preferable, and repeatable measures must be used to provide this validation since humans are excellent storytellers but lousy discerners of truth from lies. repeatable, allowing for the verification of the measures themselves.
The fact that science can only be applied to repeated phenomena is the sixth crucial point to remember. Science identifies commonality but, because of the method, cannot identify outliers.
In the end, everyone is a scientist because they make predictions about the future based on the past. Without formal training, the majority of scientists do poorly because the process is haphazard and unconscious, consistency cannot be maintained without arithmetic, and the domain of validity of hypotheses is unknown and invalidated since it is both impractical and labor-intensive.
