who was an early advocate for using scientific methods based on inductive reasoning
Aristotle René Descartes
title: History of scientific method text: the Logic of Science" (1877–1878) and "A Theory of Probable Inference" (1883). With a repeated measures design, he introduced blinded, controlled randomized experiments (before Fisher). He invented an optimal design for experiments on gravity, in which he "corrected the means". He used logistic regression, correlation, and smoothing, and improved the treatment of outliers. He introduced terms "confidence" and "likelihood" (before Neyman and Fisher). (See the historical books of Stephen Stigler.) Many of Peirce's ideas were later popularized and developed by Ronald A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, Frank P. Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti, and Karl Popper. Karl Popper (1902–1994) is generally credited title: Scientific method text: normally accepted. The scientific method is of necessity also an expression of an opposition to claims that e.g. revelation, political or religious dogma, appeals to tradition, commonly held beliefs, common sense, or, importantly, currently held theories, are the only possible means of demonstrating truth. Different early expressions of empiricism and the scientific method can be found throughout history, for instance with the ancient Stoics, Epicurus, Alhazen, Roger Bacon, and William of Ockham. From the 16th century onwards, experiments were advocated by Francis Bacon, and performed by Giambattista della Porta, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. There was particular development aided by title: History of scientific method text: early attempts at mathematically describing natural phenomena, they generally lacked underlying rational theories of nature. It was the ancient Greeks who engaged in the earliest forms of what is today recognized as a rational theoretical science, with the move towards a more rational understanding of nature which began at least since the Archaic Period (650 – 480 BCE) with the Presocratic school. Thales was the first to use natural explanations, proclaiming that every event had a natural cause, even though he is known for saying "all things are full of gods" and sacrificed an ox when he discovered his theorem. title: History of scientific method text: History of scientific method The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, as distinct from the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or another approach to establishing scientific knowledge. Despite the disagreements about approaches, scientific method has advanced in definite steps. Rationalist explanations of nature, including atomism, appeared both in ancient Greece in the thought of Leucippus title: History of scientific method text: and Democritus, and in ancient India, in the Nyaya, Vaisesika and Buddhist schools, while Charvaka materialism rejected inference as a source of knowledge in favour of an empiricism that was always subject to doubt. Aristotle pioneered scientific method in ancient Greece alongside his empirical biology and his work on logic, rejecting a purely deductive framework in favour of generalisations made from observations of nature. Some of the most important debates in the history of scientific method center on: rationalism, especially as advocated by René Descartes<nowiki>;</nowiki> inductivism, which rose to particular prominence with Isaac Newton and his followers; and hypothetico-deductivism, which