Ingredients of Scientific Success: People, Ideas, Tools, and Teams
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 160; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1210/en.2019-00332
ISSN1945-7170
Autores Tópico(s)Health and Medical Research Impacts
ResumoS cience in the late 1500s and early 1600s was not just chaotic; it actually didn't exist.The intractable problems that dominated thought were somewhat crazy when looked upon through the long lens of history: the transmutation of metals, spontaneous generation, and the centrality of the Earth in the universe dominated philosophical thought.Men of means were etching out their ideas through observation.There was no systematized way of observation, and so the evidence for these concepts was a free-for-all in freefall.Into the breach came Sir Francis Bacon and his Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620).He defined a scientific method according to principles that are the basis for experimental science-repeatable, measurable on a universal scale, economical, consilient, and heuristic.This new scientific structure, which remains valid today, created the need for adherents to Bacon's methodology, whom we call scientists.Ironically, one of the early adopters of this framework, Jan Baptista van Helmont, applied Baconian principles and disproved the theory of transmutation of metals, showing that the mass of all materials had to be accounted for in chemical processes.Further proving the strength of the scientific method for sorting out bad science, van Helmont also published the "recipe" for spontaneous generation of mice.In short order, using Bacon's method as the guide, others proved that mice do not spontaneously generate from "dirty rags, sprinkled with wheat, in an open barrel for 21 days" (1).Experimental structure informs function!Because of the Novum Organum, science and scientists, now organized, made rapid headway dismissing many of the oddities of the day.Bacon's science required scientists and a scientific method to succeed.
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