 In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science ("scientia") and religion ("religio") were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues, never as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge.In general the scientific method gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts or evaluation by experiments and thus only answers cosmological questions about the universe that can be observed and measured.It develops theories of the world which best fit physically observed evidence.