Scientific methods
Science should put more effort into research how to improve current scientific methods, or how to find new scientific methods, to address what are problematic phenomena in the context of existing methods. It is quite possible to develop better methods, and the position many scientists take, some phenomena are simply outside the scope of science – or to deny such phenomena even exist – is too easy. Even if it’s very probably right, ultimately we cannot know everything, there is still no reason to stop putting efforts into investigating what we can.
Phenomena that cannot be tested in a reliable way by our current scientific methods are characterized by the following properties, and are therefore giving some particular problems. Of course, the problems mentioned might go for more than one category. Below is just mentioned the biggest problem for each category:
1) exceptional: They cannot be repeated
2) private: They cannot be witnessed
3) subjective: They are considered a phenomenon as there is subjective meaning attributed to them; without this subjective meaning, it wouldn’t be a phenomenon
4) hidden: They cannot be observed
5) extinct: There is only information derived from the past
6) evolving: They cannot be followed
7) flipping: They are only observable under unknown conditions
8) wandering: Their observation cannot be timed
9) irrelevant: They are considered irrelevant by the scientist
Problematic phenomena of different kinds have been left uninvestigated as they didn’t fit in the current scientific methods of the particular field they occurred in. Yet if you look at it, many of the problems above have occurred already in the field of quantum mechanics; and for some problems solutions have been found in their scientific methods. Then we could use solutions from this field to investigate phenomena with the same characteristics in other fields of science. Other problems, like those with subjective phenomena, have been addressed in for example the field of economics. From this field, we could use methods to weigh and value subjective phenomena (like the Delphi method).
Part of new scientific methods should be to improve on using logic and inference first. Analog computing for example is a relatively new tool to use in logic. Using it, might make it possible, given the fact nature has a certain degree of imperfection, to predict when, where, how and for how long, an extraordinary state, conditions, phenomena, arise, so we can time our observation. It might make it possible, knowing there is some hidden phenomenon influencing observations, to find the conditions under which it occurs, so we can predict in which cases we have to take this hidden phenomenon – even though we cannot observe the thing itself – into account. Etcera.
Last but not least, if some phenomena give rise to a new way of looking at known concepts – for example the discovery, a human body consists for a much bigger part of bacterial and viral cells than of human cells, being a reason to review the concept of what we consider an ‘organism’ – those insights have to find their way into existing scientific methods in adjacing fields as well as to the public much faster and more educative than they do now. This could solve the problem of phenomena, considered irrelevant by the scientist.