Constitutional Science
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Debates over the "scientific method" are often framed as philosophical disagreements about falsification, probability, or paradigm change. These disputes typically remain content-level arguments--what counts as evidence, how belief should update, or whether revolutions are rational. This paper proposes a structural reframing. When expressed in constitutional form, the Popperian, Bayesian, and Kuhnian formulations of scientific practice reveal themselves not as mutually exclusive doctrines, but as governance layers operating within a single epistemic system. Each formulation locates authority differently: at the level of empirical integrity, probabilistic adjudication, or community standard evolution. Each encodes a distinct refusal discipline and distributes its oracle dependencies differently. By rendering these features structurally--through invariants, admissibility gates, oracle declarations, and outcome transitions--we expose complementary strengths and characteristic failure modes. The resulting insight is that scientific objectivity is not metaphysical purity but auditable dependency discipline. The scientific method, properly understood, is constitutional.
Author: Ableman, Adam
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224996510