Rethinking the Experiment

TL;DR

This paper critiques current scientific validation methods, introduces G-complexity to distinguish knowledge domains, and advocates for a new scientific approach that incorporates anticipatory processes and moves beyond reductionism.

Contribution

It proposes a re-evaluation of scientific inquiry by integrating G-complexity and anticipatory processes, aiming to transcend traditional deterministic and reductionist methods.

Findings

Highlights limitations of current reproducibility practices

Introduces G-complexity as a framework for knowledge domains

Suggests a new scientific paradigm incorporating anticipatory processes

Abstract

The crisis in the reproducibility of experiments invites a re-evaluation of methods of inquiry and validation procedures. The text challenges current assumptions of knowledge acquisition and introduces G-complexity for defining decidable vs. non-decidable knowledge domains. A "second Cartesian revolution," informed by and in awareness of anticipatory processes, should result in scientific methods that transcend determinism and reductionism. Physics and physics-based disciplines convincingly ascertained themselves by adequately describing the non-living. A complementary perspective should account for the specific causality characteristic of life by integrating past, present, and future. Knowledge about anticipatory processes facilitates attainment of this goal. Society cannot afford the dead-end street of reductionism. Science, itself an expression of anticipatory activity, makes possible in our days alternative understandings of reality and its dynamics.