0I believe that there is no concrete way to learn something new.
By that, I mean one has to develop their own sense of intuition, logic and understanding which can be mastered by practising scientific method,
I will explain the "Scientific Method" with an example.
1. Observation :
This is the first and foremost thing a curious person does in attempting to understand the world around him. If you are critically vigilant, you can observe physical phenomena happening around you all the time. Things evolve around you. When humans grasped this, science was born. We started recording events in order to learn more about the same.
Say, for example, you want to study the motion of a planet around the star.
Now you become curious. You search for the truth by asking more questions about it like
- What causes it to revolve around the star ?
- Can I record the postion of the planet at frequent interval and see if there is a pattern to it ?
- Is there something hidden in plain sight which experiment can't reveal ?
- Can I predict it's motion ?
And the list goes on.
By asking the right questions hoping that can lead you to an answer. You might wonder, what do I mean by "right". There is no answer to it. You just learn to ask the right questions through experience.
2. Hypothesis :
Based on the findings to your questions, you start postulating laws that describe the natural phenomena and explain your observations. In this example, it is the law dictating its position around the Star as a function of time. Now we have a hypothesis which supposedly explains the generalised phenomena. We formulate experiments that test the hypothesis to confirm whether it's true or false.
3. Prediction :
Let's say ISRO, an Indian Space agency, plans a mission to send a spacecraft to study more about the planet's atmosphere. The basic idea is to let the spacecraft orbit the planet and take pictures if possible. Now, this law concerning the motion of that planet which you came up with does no good if you cannot predict it's future path because our spacecraft might be on a collison path with the planet. That could lead to a catastrophe.
Iterate those three steps.
That is the essence of science. It is a way of gaining knowledge.
