308 Thurs
playground, only to discover that his schoolmates had no idea what he
was talking about. But “scientifi c method” as a standardized slogan grew
to prominence during the early years of the twentieth century, just those
years Roelofs was recalling (see fi gures 12.1, 12.2, and 12.3).^2 Nor was its
formation limited to specialized and technical discussions of scientifi c prac-
tice. Methodological rhetoric has typically served as a resource in debates,
whether over details of scientifi c knowledge, across the borders of institu-
tional or disciplinary organization, or in public. Partisans have cited very
different images on each of these levels. The more “internal” a debate, the
more likely methodological tools involved particular procedures, proto-
cols, or techniques of interest to close colleagues instead of some global and
often rather abstract characteristic of science as a whole. Scientifi c method
was, and remains, a creature of the popular realm and, unlike many scien-
tifi c terms, a shared element in the vocabularies of scientists and laymen
alike. By the mid- twentieth century, “scientifi c method” had often found
a place in that arbiter of standard English vocabulary, the dictionary. Like-
wise, many modern high school science textbooks have come to include
a chapter or section entitled “Scientifi c Method.” The 1981 Macmillan
Biology even distilled its steps into a handy, easy- to- remember fl ow chart.^3
Roelofs’s recollections also rightly suggest that, though many people
have agreed on the importance of scientifi c method, it has often eluded
any precise defi nition, dictionaries aside. While a third of Americans sur-
veyed in a 1958 poll conducted for the National Association of Science
Writers identifi ed the scientifi c method vaguely with being “thorough”
and “getting to the bottom” of things, a quarter could not answer the ques-
tion at all.^4 Nor was there any more clarity among practicing scientists. In
1874, British economist Stanley Jevons complained in his widely noted
Principles of Science that “physicists speak familiarly of scientifi c method,
but they could not readily describe what they mean by that expression.”^5
Near the apparent height of its popularity in the 1920s, sociologist Stuart
Rice attempted an “inductive examination” of the defi nitions of scientifi c
method offered in social scientifi c literature. Ultimately, he lamented the
“futility” of his mission. “The number of items in such an enumeration,”
he wrote, “would be infi nitely large.”^6 Unlike discussions about scientifi c
knowledge, in which modern scientists have managed to convince many
people, at least those with political and fi nancial power, of their right to
speak authoritatively, no single group has successfully claimed the right to
determine or force consensus about the meaning of scientifi c method.
Identifying such variation in meaning is not to question the existence
of reliable scientifi c knowledge or to undermine the conclusions of sci-
entists. Rather, it is to accept the nature of language. Signifi cant cultural