What do you believe that 'the scientific method' is? How would you describe it?
My own experience (I'm a twister, schemer and ranter, so take it for what it's worth) is that the phrase usually refers to some vaguely described version of hypothico-deductivism: Generate a hypothesis, then test it.
1) Make an observation.
2) Develop a hypothesis.
3) Test the hypothesis
The thing is, a lot of scientific work doesn't fit very easily into that model. There are expeditions that survey and catalog the species living in a particular habitat.
Making an observation, the first step of the scientific method.
The hypothesis they most often develop is that a given species has/has not been catalogued before.
The hypothesis is tested by comparing their observations to the observations of others.
There's the current search for extra-solar planets.
Making an observation, the first step of the scientific method.
Every solar system observed is a test of the Nice model of planetary formation.
We're ultimately testing the hypothesis that life is common.
There's geological surveys.
I've studied Geology and done mapping surveys, they're one big exercise in hypothesis testing.
You observe a rock outcrop.
You develop a hypothesis of how it came to be there.
You test that hypothesis by making observations of other rock outcrops.
Eventually you develop a hypothesis to explain the regional geology.
There's the Mars rovers, looking around and sampling things,
The mars rovers are testing hypotheses.
They're testing the hypothesis that mars was once wet.
They're testing the hypothesis that habitable environments once existed on mars.
They're testing hypotheses of regional geology.
There's the creation and application of taxonomic schemes in order to classify all the new data.
Arguably they're testing the hypothesis that the data is classifiable.
Even if we choose to only consider cases that do fit more comfortably into the hypothetico-deductive hypothesis-testing scheme, we still haven't said anything about where scientific hypotheses come from in the first place. We still haven't considered the myriad of ways that hypotheses might be tested. We haven't given thought to the logical problems that arise, such as the problem of induction. In other words, the H-D scheme doesn't seem to even address most of what it is that scientists spend their time doing.
We don't have to, although, I suspect that this is where confusion is arising. The distinction between the scientific method, which in its broadest sense could be stated as:
Make an obersvation.
Develop a hypothesis to explain the observation.
Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
Conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis.
If the experiment confirms the prediction, make a new prediction and conduct a new experiment.
If the experiment contradicts the prediction, examine the hypothesis. Sometimes a hypothesis can be trivially reformulated to make a correct prediction for the experiment, sometimes the hypothesis may be worth investigating to see what other predictions are incorrect, sometimes further experimentation can suggest how a hypothesis might be reformulated, sometimes a hypothesis must simply be abandoned.
And the rigorous methodologies, the analytical techniques and measurements used to conduct and reportthe experiments, the repeatable methodologies that are employed to conduct
Nor does it provide a clear demarcation between what is and isn't science. I assume that I have clean socks in my drawer. (My hypothesis.) I'm not sure, so I open the drawer and look. Yep, there's the socks. (My test.) If we loosten the H-D model to the point it can embrace all of the hypothesis generation and testing methods that scientists really employ in their work, then it doesn't look a whole lot different from and doesn't appear to be discontinuous with non-scientific common-sense.
Who says there is one? There are demarcations, but they're about the employment of the scientific method, the rigour to which it is followed, and so on. That's where the demarcation between, for example, Science, Alternative Theories, and Pseudoscience comes into play.
On the other hand, you've hit the nail on the head. Science is just the name we give to a method we have developed to explore things we do not yet understand or know. The scientific method is intuitively understood by babies and toddlers.
Observation: I push my plate off my tray and it moves towards the ground.
Hypothesis: Plates move towards the ground when I push them off my tray.
Test: Pushing the plates off my tray.
Toddlers will test a hypothesis something like 80 times before they stop testing it, and the only thing parents can really do is let them satisfy their curiosity.
'The Scientific Method' is simply the name we give to 'Applied Curiosity'.
