Answer:
The scientific method is the means by which science acquires its knowledge and broadens its understanding of the natural, human and social worlds, through a series of steps that are very rigurous and that require not just observation, but also testing and proving. Although observation of the natural world, and interest in it has been with humans since almost ancient times, the method really began to develop as such, with its steps, around the 17th century and it became an empirical way to not only acquire, but also refine, renew, and update knowledge on all that surrounds humans.
The method is composed, as said, of a series of steps, that feed into a circular, or cyclical style, which means that research will only be liable to be refreshed, made void by new information acquired, or upheld. The steps are: defining a question on a matter of interest. Then, start observing and acquiring the necessary information to see if the a hypothesis can be formed, and thus research can be carried out. Then, formulate your hypothesis, test it through the collection of data that can prove it and can be easily reproduced and tested by others, interpret your data, draw conclusions from what has been acquired and then pubish the results and retest the hypothesis. These steps apply to all research on the scientific method, in a circular manner, and they don´t stop. Also, the fact that a thesis is always being tested, and new data is acquired, makes the knowledge gathered from it self-correcting.
