The scientific method aims to answer the question: how does a scientist work? This question may seem simple enough, but it contains a host of deeply philosophical questions: what is a scientist; what is science? What does and doesn't count as scientific knowledge? How is scientific knowledge different than other forms of knowledge? The scientific method aims to answer these questions as well. That is, the scientific method aims to answer epistemological questions (that is, questioning the nature of knowledge itself).
As a philosophy, Bacon's inductivism lacks an epistemological framework. Inductivism is purely descriptive and cannot tell us how knowledge arises, or even what counts as knowledge. Thus it fails as a complete account of the scientific method. The scientific method has to do more than simply describe what a scientist does. It has to make claims about what counts as knowledge; in particular, scientific knowledge.
Baconian inductivism states that scientists work by inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is a form of reasoning wherein a scientist first observes nature, then forms a theory (or law) based on that observation. He then goes on to observe more of nature. If future observations are consistent with his theory, he continues to broaden and expand that theory. If observation contradicts his theory, he discards that theory and forms a new one. This is Francis Bacon's inductivism.
This description is quite limited, however, because it does not include an epistemology: it says nothing about how scientists come to know things. Inductivism tells us that scientists observe things. But there's a gap between raw observation and knowing something. You may observe the sun rising every morning but that does not mean you know anything about the sun, it's properties, or what might happen tomorrow. You simply have a memory of what you have observed in the past. The job of the scientist is to bridge this gap between observing and knowing.
Scientists work with their raw observations in a particular way in order to transform their observation into knowledge. Using observation and other resources (such prior knowledge, deduction, imagination, and conjecture), they come to understand mechanisms like cause-and-effect. They discover natural law (i.e. gravitation). Raw observation itself is not knowledge; it is but a single element in the entire scientific method. Because it only discusses observation, Baconian inductivism cannot account for this scientific process.
In truth, the scientific method is a multifaceted process including: observation, status-quo assumptions and theories, institutional biases and academic culture, luck, happenstance, creativity, etc. Baconian inductivism is too ideal and simplistic a model to account for these myriad factors.
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