The Scientific Method is a product of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century, and it wasn’t until Pasture in the 19th Century that Philosophers began to change into scientists.
Actually, you can trace the beginning much further than that. It isn’t really a formal methodology as it is a body of work built over many years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
Well, according to wiki perhaps, but that isn’t very reliable, and science as we know it and from history did not start any earlier as everything before the Enlightenment was based on long disproven practices and theories pulled out of someone’s hat (humors, the ether, etc). There was no body of knowledge worthy of the name before then. What had been accumulated over millennia, and remained until recent times, was destroyed by the Arab Invasion beginning in 628 AD.
This had been preceded by Girolamo Savonarola, 1452-1498 who burnt as many books as he could lay his mitts on.
The Enlightenment was a virtual reboot of knowledge and the start of the scientific method - regardless of wiki-thought.