who made the scientific method

No single person “made” the scientific method; it evolved over many centuries, but a few names stand out.

Quick Scoop

• The idea of investigating nature systematically goes back to ancient Greece, especially Aristotle , who emphasized observation and early forms of inductive reasoning.

• In the Islamic Golden Age (roughly 10th–14th centuries), scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) used careful observation, controlled experiments, and step‑by‑step reasoning in optics and physics; many historians see him as a key architect of an experimental method.

• In medieval Europe, Roger Bacon stressed experimentation and a cycle of observation, hypothesis, and verification, which looks very close to the later scientific method.

• In the early 1600s, Francis Bacon pulled many of these ideas together; he argued that knowledge should be built through systematic observation, experimentation, and inductive reasoning, and for this he is often called the “father of the modern scientific method.”

• Later scientists like Galileo and Isaac Newton actually used and refined this method in physics and astronomy, helping it become the standard way science is done.

So who “made” it?

If you need one name for “who made the scientific method,” most textbooks will point to Francis Bacon as the founder of the modern form. But in reality, the scientific method is a long, collaborative invention shaped by ancient Greek philosophers, medieval Islamic scientists, European medieval scholars like Roger Bacon, and early modern figures such as Galileo and Newton.

A useful way to think about it: Aristotle planted the seeds, Islamic scholars like Ibn al‑Haytham cultivated them, Roger Bacon pruned and shaped them, and Francis Bacon branded and formalized the tree we now call “the scientific method.”