The Scientific Method Is Organized Play

The human brain is wired to experiment and collect data from the earliest age. Babies and toddlers engage with objects and observe that balls bounce, glass breaks, bubbles float. These observations build an internal library of data — a stored body of remembered sensations and experiences that determine future actions of increasing sophistication, coordination, and skill. In childhood, this activity is called play.

These instinctive behaviors — thought, experiment or action, observation, repetition — are really the foundations of science. The natural elements of play create a blueprint for a more formal system of thinking about how the universe works.

This system has a name: the scientific method. It’s a way to keep track of ideas, measure results, and ensure that experiments can be reproduced and shared. It is based on the human imagination, curiosity, and creativity that begins in early childhood.

It is a system that evolved naturally without authority — like play — but cooperatively, as in an inspired game in order to add order and reason to the joyful realm of open discovery. Ideas can be proposed without bound, to be tested experimentally and compared with expected results, with the instructions available for others to try as well. There are no secrets, no kings, and the joy of discovery and learning is open to all who wish to learn.

It’s common to think of science as something studied and practiced only by specialists — something outside the reach and understanding of most people. The philosophy of creative discovery and learning can be lost through the way science is taught, often as a body of facts to be memorized and recited. Ironically, even the scientific method is often taught as a concept to be regurgitated as a series of steps rather than as a philosophy of thought — a heritage that is inherently human. What becomes lost is the understanding that scientific knowledge is open to everyone. It is constantly under refinement and revision, and discovery is driven by the same instincts of joyful childhood play.

In learning science, students should be mindful of the history and people behind the discoveries, the ideas and experiments that led to the understandings of today. Repeating the experiments that led to those discoveries can inspire their imagination and teach them skills for preparing future experiments of their own. Most importantly, understanding the scientific method is a way to see the world without boundaries where understanding and knowledge are as natural as childhood play.

The scientific method is just organized play.