The Myth of a New Method

To explain the success of the Scientific Revolution a myth has grown up that this Revolution was made possible by a New Method, a method which was totally different from the way philosophers used to think. But this is just a myth. There was no New Method. Those scientists who brought in the New Science were not using a New Method. They were merely applying an old method--the theseological method--to the study of nature. The application was new; but the method was old. In the many centuries before the Scientific Revolution, codebreakers had been following clues and developing new clues from old.

Sherlock Holmes, a codebreaker himself like many of the early scientists, takes for granted that the method used in breaking codes, in solving crimes, and in doing science, is one and the same. In his later years his interests had been turning from crime to the natural sciences.

'Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible.'

--Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem