Scientific Method

Taekwondo techniques involve mental processes but they mostly involve physical processes (movements). The scientific method should be used when dealing with physical processes. The scientific method has four steps:

• Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
• Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
• Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
• Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

Martial artists do not need to be scientists to evaluate martial art techniques. They only need to:

• Know the basic laws of physics as they relate to martial art techniques.
• Know some basic engineering practices and be able to relate them to martial art techniques.
• Be able to evaluate martial art techniques using known data or from watching the techniques in practice.

All physical phenomena are explained by the laws of physics; therefore, martial art techniques must comply with these laws. The physics of Taekwondo techniques are explained in other topics within TKDTutor.