A Model of Science Process,
developed for my PhD Project:

My PhD dissertation included two major objectives:

    1. Construct an integrative model of Scientific Method.

    2. Use this model for integrative analysis of instruction in an innovative, inquiry-oriented science course.

You can learn more about Science Process, which also is called Scientific Method — Is there a method? (no & yes)` — at levels ranging from introductory overviews to in-depth explorations, in web-pages that summarize ideas from my PhD dissertation:

An Introduction to Scientific Method is a good starting place for the main activities of science:  Using Experiments to Make Observations, Making Predictions, Theory Design (by generation-and-evaluation), Experimental Design (by generation-and-evaluation).

Because my model of Integrated Scientific Method was a unifying synthesis of ideas (mainly from scientists and philosophers, but also from sociologists, psychologists, historians, educators, and myself), much of what I've written is about “the nature of science” as viewed from these differing perspectives.

also:  During the oral defense for my PhD, I juggled for fun (in a change of pace to make the event a little more memorable) and for analogy, to show similarities between teaching people how to juggle (as with Mill's Mess) and to understand the process of science, by analyzing each complex process (juggling or science) into simpler parts – trying to cope with the complexity – and then putting the parts together to form a unified whole.  The purpose of the analogy was to show how – with juggling or science – creative analysis can help us develop a better understanding (more accurate and thorough) of a complex process, in its parts and as a whole.     { Before juggling, I asked my advisor “would this be OK?” so he asked ”why?” and after I explained he said “yes” in one of the many ways that he (Jim Stewart) was an excellent advisor – in this case with a flexible creativity-friendly attitude – for me and for many other students. }

A Basic Overview of Scientific Method is a condensed version of my model for Integrated Science Process, which includes 9 aspects of Science Process;

A Detailed Overview of Scientific Method examines the 9 aspects more deeply, with illustrations;  it also has the condensed versions (with the same text as in "A Basic Overview...") so you can use inside-the-page links to instantly jump back and forth between the two levels, with more condensing and more details.

These two pages (Basic Overview, Detailed Overview) are condensations of ideas in my Ph.D. Dissertation, which you can explore by using a section with links to the full text — which is much more user-friendly because the web-version of its “world record” Table of Contents has links taking you to specific pages within the large PDF file, directly to each topic! — plus its references, an early history (1990-1997) of my diagrams for Science Process & Design Process, made during my process of developing a model for Integrated Scientific Method (in Part 1) and (in Part 2) applying this model for an integrative analysis of a science-inquiry classroom.

What is the Nature of Science?  By combining a framework and supplements my model of Scientific Method "can be used to describe many types of scientific practices and many views of science," including some views that I think are inaccurate:

    Unfortunately, it's necessary to ask Should Scientific Method be Eks-Rated? because "some scholars have converted a good idea – examining the mutual interactions between culture and science – into a bad idea that has undesirable consequences, when they take this good idea to silly extremes" in radical postmodernism.

    In similar ways, Reality 101 uses Solar System Questions — asking “what did change?” and “what did not change?” when comparing our views of the Solar System in 1500 and 1700 — to challenge the "amazingly silly" views of radical postmodern relativists, and looks at the important distinctions between truth-claims and truth, and between humanly-constructed realities and human-independent realities.

    Tools for Analysis - Idealizations & Range Diagrams can help us "clarify the ways that science is (and is not) influenced by cultural-personal factors, in various situational contexts" in an effort to avoid "unwarranted implications that occur when the situations selected for analysis [by scholars promoting radical views of science] are not an accurate representation of the entire population [of scientists & their science projects]."

Focusing on Parts of Science Process

If you want to focus on one (or more) of the 9 aspects of Science Process, in the web-resources above, here are some suggestions:

First, study the Verbal-and-Visual Explorations and Verbal Descriptions in the homepage for Science Process`.  Then,...

For some aspects (6, 7, 8, 9) the possibilities are simple so you can just use links in the table below, with four stages of progressively more detailed descriptions — first in this website, then in my Basic Overview and Detailed Overview and Dissertation — although Thought Styles (8) also includes links for the closely related Cultural-Personal Factors (3).

But for Theory Design (123, 4, 5) my suggestions are more detailed, so it's better to avoid the space-restrictions of a table by also describing the possibilities here:

You may want to begin with

For each aspect of 1-2-3-4-5 you can use the same progression as for 6-7-8-9, by clicking links in the top part of the table.

You can explore the Evaluation Factors (1 2 3) in any order, either all at once (do 123 in the website, then 123 in the Basic Overview,...), or one at a time (do the progression for 1, then for 2, and for 3).

In this website, two pages — Designing Theories/Models and Making Predictions (which covers many aspects of Theory Design, and links to relevant parts of other pages) and Creative-and-Critical Invention — are useful for Theory Design and also Experimental Design, which are the major activities in Science Process, and are abbreviated "predict" and "invent".

In the table below, it will be easier to use the column for "this website" if you put this page in the left frame (if it isn't there already) because in that column all of the links open in the right frame.

Links to the Detailed Overview take you to its Table of Contents where you can browse (to get an overview of the topics, and stimulate your own memories and thoughts about these topics) and then click any links you think might be interesting and informative.

Each link to "Dissertation" goes to the relevant part of its Table of Contents, which links to the full-text PDF.