Scientific method cannot be transferred wholesale across research fields

Evidence

To think that one can advance the progress of a work of scientific research by applying to it a standard method, chosen because it has given good results in another field of research to which it was naturally suited, is a strange delusion which has little to do with science. … Thus one can say someone is not a scientist if he displays a lack of sureness in his particular criteria, if he does not have a full understanding of the concepts he is using, if he has scant information on and understanding of the previous state of the problems he is dealing with, if he is not very cautious in his assertions, if he does not proceed in a necessary but in an arbitrary and disconnected fashion, if he cannot take account of the gaps that exist in knowledge acquired but covers them over and contents himself with purely verbal solutions and connections instead of stating that one is dealing with provisional positions which may have to be gone over again and developed, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1561

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci defines the ‘critical consciousness’ of the scientist — a methodological self-relation relevant to how fields inherit frameworks uncritically.
• XREF: Connects to the toolkit’s ‘representation and the construction of the Other’ strand — the risk of importing a method suited to one domain into another. — connects to: Each field of research must develop its own method rather than borrow natural-science method — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1560