"Method" is from words meaning to "follow a way" -- from the Greek "meta" ("along") and "odos" (a way or road). Method refers to the specification of steps which must be taken, in a given order, to achieve a given end.
The nature of the steps and the details of their specification depend on the end sought and on the variety of ways of achieving it. What are the ends of science? Some would say the "conquest" of nature (or, more modestly, its manipulation). Others, perhaps, would say the discovery of truth.
Scientific method in science in general is the alleged lowest common denominator of a range of methods devised to cope with problems as diverse as classifying stars and curing AIDS.
Such a lowest common denominator, some feel, can amount to little more than:
1. fidelity to empirical
evidence and
2. simplicity of logical
formulation
with fidelity to empirical evidence taking precedence in case of conflict.
However, note that there is no specification of steps to be taken by scientists in this view, and if math is considered a science even fidelity to empirical evidence must be given up.
It is such a strict specification of steps possible?
Some have tried it -- take a look here are at the schema for scientific method that was recently proposed by Frederick Dessauer (and passed out in class). Recall that this understanding of scientific method is called the "inductive method" of science and it reflects both general professional and popular understanding of scientific method. Dessauer's account of scientific method fits well with the widespread characterization of a supposed main difference between scientists and religionists. (Remember that it is often claimed that religion is primarily "deductive" in method – that is,
Scientists (it is claimed) do not make a priori commitments, do not make decisions on esthetic or intuitive grounds. They only let themselves be guided by the facts and careful process of induction.
In this widespread specification of the steps of scientific method, however, nothing is said about the source of the original induction (it is often intuitive and esthetic). Nor it is anything said about the criteria of pre-selection at work in scientific decisions (some things make sense in light of the shared fundamental assumptions of a scientific discipline -- some do not; the selection of hypotheses and the interpretation of results is thus not strictly impartial).
Dessauer's account of scientific procedure is not wrong -- it is partial. It does broadly characterize certain features of science as a public institution. But its categories and steps leave out an essential point: to a smaller or larger degree, the process of building up an actual scientific theory of inductive explanation requires decisions that are not scientifically valid in Dessauer's sense (that is, strictly empirical and inductive). When scientists actually do science, the adoption of initial hypotheses often is intuitive and almost always there are indeed criteria of pre-selection at work in the building of scientific theories.
The differences between the sciences and religion are undoubted and real at many levels. They become less impressive though when you look carefully at the construction of scientific theories in the real world. Scientific, humanistic, and religionist processes of knowing (their "methods") are grounded in the one process of human knowing -- all can have some validity within their own precincts.
Science has not given men more self control, more kindliness, or more power of discounting their passions in deciding upon a course of action. It has given communities more power to indulge their collective passions, but, by making society more organic, it has diminished the part played by private passions. Men's collective passions are mainly evil; far the strongest among them are hatred and rivalry directed toward other groups. Therefore at present all that gives men power to indulge their collective passions is bad. That is why science threatens to cause the destruction of our civilization.
-- Bertrand Russell (1931)