The crisis of contemporary science

To present a new approach to scientific thinking (paradigm) that avoids the shortcomings and inconsistencies of the prevailing Newtonian approach.

The signs of a science in crisis are reviewed and some of its shortcomings are compiled and connected to some misleading fundamental assumptions of the reigning paradigm of science. Calls attention to a current fundamental misunderstanding of the human capacity of observation – especially the negligence of the conceptual feedback loops of the human mind that make up the core of human learning capacity.

When using a subject‐oriented approach (SOA) to science, which takes off from the individual knowing the subject (methodological solipsism), it is possible to consistently construct a knower's science where all today's misleading assumptions can be successfully removed. This effort results in an abstract constructivist epistemology, where the reversed cause‐effect chain severely upsets the classically trained mind – especially in natural science.

There is a great deal of work left to examine the soundness of these ideas and pave the way for such a profound re‐orientation of traditional science that as a first step will be concerned with elucidating and explicating a wide range of problems and concerns in set and decision theory, logic, and mathematics. This is essentially to launch a research programme in these areas that as a next step includes all natural and social sciences that will appear in a new light when viewed from a first person, SOA.

There is no other way for science to evade the prevailing crisis but to involve, in its very Kuhnian sense, a radical change of paradigm. In this view, the realist confusion, which is responsible for the genesis of Cartesian dualism and a row of other inconsistencies met with intoday's science, will slowly vanish, as will the embarrassing gulf between the natural and social sciences as well as humanism. This new “world‐view” that seems radical to the scientist will appear natural to the everyday man – but its impact on human culture will be monumental.

The SOA to science is based on a reversed cause‐effect thinking that will have a heavy influence on the way people think about the world and is accordingly a concern of all human beings as well as each researcher – of whatever of discipline.