There is indeed no such thing as “the”…

There is indeed no such thing as “the” scientific method. A scientist uses a very great variety of exploratory stratagems, and although a scientist has a certain address to his problems- a certain way of going about things that is more likely to bring success than the groping of an amateur- he uses no procedure of discovery that can be logically scripted. According to Popper’s methodology, every recognition of a truth is preceded by an imaginative preconception of what the truth might be – by hypotheses such as William Whewell first called “happy guesses.”