I have pondered the thought but I see no way the scientific method is subject to itself. This is in part true because the scientific method is not empirical knowledge. In other words, we cannot scientifically show science.
It can honestly be said that science is really a philosophy. It is a philosophy in that it is a set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity. Science has only it practical application to warrant it as in any as a superior form of knowledge. That is if science is a superior form of knowledge.
Knowledge is sometime broken down into as follows. LOGICAL There is a knowledge resulting from an understanding of the relationship of ideas to one another. SEMANTIC There is knowledge resulting from the meaning of words. SYSTEMIC There is knowledge resulting of learning a system of words, or symbols and how they relate to one another. EMPIRICAL There is a knowledge that comes through our senses. Science is an example of this type of knowledge.
Science is really a way to test, validate, and catalog empirical knowledge. Nevertheless, much of what we all think of as science we know not as empirical knowledge but by a combination of the other three forms of knowledge. Most of what we each understand as science we did not observe ourselves we learned though the use of words so we can see it as semantic knowledge. In the transfer of knowledge with science we generally use systematic logic so these other two forms of knowledge generally come into play. One reason to have science is to make the transfer of knowledge practical. This is why we study science. I can say science is the study of others’ empirical knowledge.
History is another collection of knowledge. At some point history was empirical but here just like in science most of what we think of as historical knowledge is learned by means of semantics. Is historical knowledge less valuable because it is not subject to testing today?
Philosophy of History is an area of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible teleological end to its development—that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history. Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology and the philosophy of language. The above is taken from the related topics over at Wikipedia.
My point is that science and history are really theories of knowledge. The philosophy of history is partially subject to itself. You can analyze if the philosophy of history has had eventual significance. I would say that it has. I have pondered the thought but I see no way the scientific method is subject to itself. This is in part true because the scientific method is not empirical knowledge. In other words, we cannot scientifically show science.
