Natural Metasciences

The systematic study of the natural sciences themselves—a second-order discipline that takes physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and related fields as its objects of inquiry. Natural metasciences ask meta-level questions about natural scientific knowledge: How do natural scientists know what they claim to know? What methods do different natural science disciplines use? How does natural scientific knowledge change over time? How do social, cultural, and institutional contexts shape natural science? What are the limits of natural scientific understanding? Natural metasciences are the natural sciences reflecting on themselves—the attempt to understand what natural science is, what it can achieve, and how it relates to other forms of knowledge. They're essential for natural science to be self-aware rather than merely successful, for natural scientists to understand their own practices rather than just practicing them.

Example: "Her natural metasciences research examined how the discovery of quantum mechanics forced physics to confront philosophical questions it had long ignored—not as a distraction from physics, but as essential to understanding what physics had discovered. Physics studying itself becomes philosophy."

by Abzugal March 16, 2026