Best Ide Eyes Wide Open By Richard Powers

The article Best Idea: Eyes Wide Open by Richard Powers discusses different aspects of the scientific method. It begins by talking about a man named Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham who made discoveries regarding vision. He did this by simply performing observations and having people stare directly at the sun. Ibn al-Haytham changed the way science was viewed by telling people to simply look in order to gain information. Later, William of Ockham came up with the idea that “when you have multiple ways to explain something, go with the one that has the least amount of assumptions” (Powers, 1999, p. 4). My interpretation of this is that you shouldn’t make something harder than it needs to be. Do not assume, but rather work with the observations and experiments that you have performed. This idea eventually became known as Ockham’s Razor. Rene Descartes went in a different direction and believed that all science can be demonstrated by a series of deductions and self-evident facts, instead of something that is run through observation and experimentation.

Testing can be performed in multiple ways. One way is through a placebo-controlled study. There is multiple groups within this study. One group is called a control group in which people are not actually given the real item that is being tested. Instead they are given something that will have no real effect in order to have something to base the real item on. Another type of testing is the double blind experiment. “This type of experiment occurs when information about the test is kept from the subject and the tester. All of this is done in an attempt to keep bias out of the trial” (Fish,