"Robert Grosseteste affirmed and refined Aristotle's inductive-deductive method, which he termed the Method of Resolution and Composition for its inductive and deductive components, respectively. But he added to Aristotle's methods of induction. His purposes were to verify true theories and to falsify false theories. Causal laws were suspected when certain phenomena were frequently correlated, but natural science sought robust knowledge of real causes, not accidental correlations. ...His approach used deduction to falsify proposed but defective inductions. ...Grosseteste's Method of Verification deduced consequences of a theory beyond its original application and then checked those predictions experimentally. His Method of Falsification eliminated bad theories by deducing implications known to be false. Grosseteste clearly understood that his optimistic view of induction required two metaphysical presuppositions about the nature of physical reality: the uniformity of nature and the principle of parsimony or simplicity. Without those presuppositions, there is no defensible method of induction in particular or method of science in general."
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Academics from EnglandReligious leadersPhilosophers from EnglandEducators from EnglandAnglican bishops
Original Language: English
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Hugh G. Gauch, Scientific Method in Brief (2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste
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Robert Grosseteste
1175 – 1253
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175 – 1253) was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, scientist, pastor, poet, educator and Bishop of Lincoln, Province of Canterbury, England. From about 1220 to 1235 he wrote a host of scientific treatises and was an early supporter of what was to become the scientific method. Roger Bacon expressed his indebtedness to the work of Grosseteste and A.C. Crombie describes him as "the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford.
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