Reflective Empiricism: Bias Reflection and Introspection as a Scientific Method
arXiv Preprint Archive April 7, 2025 Oliver Marc Wittwer
Reflective Empiricism extends empirical science by treating subjective perception and conscious processes as equally valid sources of knowledge. Reality is understood as an interplay of subjective experience and objective laws, accessible through systematic introspection, bias reflection, and premise-based logical-explorative modeling. The approach offers a method for recognizing biases, building premise-based models from observed phenomena, and treating Eureka moments as starting points for hypotheses that are later tested empirically. The author applies self-observation, such as analyzing belief formation, to demonstrate the method. Rooted in references like Archimedes' intuition and the quantum observer effect, Reflective Empiricism aims to enrich empirical research and accelerate knowledge creation by integrating anomalies and subjective depth, without replacing standard empirical methods.