The scientific method is the closest to perfection among implemented plans for mining new truth devised to date by the ingenuity of humans. All of the proposed

The scientific method is the closest to perfection among implemented plans for mining new truth devised to date by the ingenuity of humans. All of the proposed better plans that I know of basically involve ways of running the scientific method faster (e.g. strong AI). The utility of the scientific method is that it works even when run by self-interested, flawed, irrational humans. Technology moves ahead. People live rather than die, and become far wealthier than their ancestors. That this process kicked into high gear sometime around the time and place that the scientific method was finally formalized and that formalism successfully popularized, after thousands of years of ragged, slow, and erratic progress, does not seem to me to be a coincidence.