Scientific anomalistics sees itself as a content-determined, and delimited area of science which is committed to the application of appropriate scientific methodology, as well as generally accepted, and necessary, scientific control mechanisms. The specification of research subjects is not the result of assignment to groups of phenomena of specific scientific (sub-) disciplines, but of the ascription of an anomalistic character which (at first) makes these phenomena, or experiences, a subject of anomalistic research. Accordingly, anomalistics is not characterized by its own (...) specific methodology but is oriented by the requirements of the respectively concerned discipline(s) (physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, science of history, etc.). For a long time, (natural) science approaches have been considered paradigmatic for anomalistic research and for parapsychological research in particular. However, during the last few decades, social-scientific approaches and qualitative research methods have become increasingly important as supplementary and alternative methods. As a result, single case studies and the investigation of ostensible spontaneous psi phenomena have lost their often premature reputation of being unscientific. Qualitative research methodology, which is used predominantly in social and cultural sciences as well as in anthropology, now represents a useful supplement to quantitative approaches. In some cases, and for several research questions, it proves to be ultimately superior, because one can avoid the considerable reduction of complexity which is obligatory for quantitative methods. Therefore, the research, as well as the researchers, can come much closer to living-world manifestations of anomalistic phenomena and experiences than is the case with the relatively artificial situation in laboratory experiments. As we are trying to demonstrate in our paper, anomalistic research should be conducted in a reflective manner under the described paradigm of reflexive anomalistics. The term signifies a social scientific informed approach to anomalistic phenomena which is aware of (a) the epistemic particularities of the phenomena under research, (b) the precarious cultural (media, science policy) framework conditions of this research, and (c) the areas of tension between subjective evidence, scientific proof and social discourse. These factors have to be systematically taken into consideration when developing scientific research questions as well as methodological approaches. (shrink)

Ontology, the ideas we have about the nature of reality, and epistemology, our concepts about how to gain knowledge about the world, are interdependent. Currently, the dominant ontology in science is a materialist model, and associated with it an empiricist epistemology. Historically speaking, there was a more comprehensive notion at the cradle of modern science in the middle ages. Then “experience” meant both inner, or first person, and outer, or third person, experience. With the historical development, experience has come to (...) mean only sense experience of outer reality. This has become associated with the ontology that matter is the most important substance in the universe, everything else—consciousness, mind, values, etc., —being derived thereof or reducible to it. This ontology is insufficient to explain the phenomena we are living with—consciousness, as a precondition of this idea, or anomalous cognitions. These have a robust empirical grounding, although we do not understand them sufficiently. The phenomenology, though, demands some sort of non-local model of the world and one in which consciousness is not derivative of, but coprimary with matter. I propose such a complementarist dual aspect model of consciousness and brain, or mind and matter. This then also entails a different epistemology. For if consciousness is coprimary with matter, then we can also use a deeper exploration of consciousness as happens in contemplative practice to reach an understanding of the deep structure of the world, for instance in mathematical or theoretical intuition, and perhaps also in other areas such as in ethics. This would entail a kind of contemplative science that would also complement our current experiential mode that is exclusively directed to the outside aspect of our world. Such an epistemology might help us with various issues, such as good theoretical and other intuitions. (shrink)