Quasi-empirical method

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Quasi-empirical methods are scientific methods used to gain knowledge in situations where empirical evidence cannot be gathered through experimentation, or experience cannot falsify the ideas involved. Quasi-empirical methods aim to be as closely analogous to empirical methods as possible.^[1]

Empirical research relies on, and its empirical methods involve experimentation and disclosure of apparatus for reproducibility, by which scientific findings are validated by other scientists. Empirical methods are studied extensively in the philosophy of science, but they cannot be used directly in fields whose hypotheses cannot be falsified by real experiment (for example, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and ideology). Because of such limits, the scientific method must rely not only on empirical methods but sometimes also on quasi-empirical ones. The prefix quasi- came to denote methods that are "almost" or "socially approximate" an ideal of truly empirical methods.

Quasi-empirical method usually refers to a means of choosing problems to focus on (or ignore), selecting prior work on which to build an argument or proof, notations for informal claims, peer review and acceptance, and incentives to discover, ignore, or correct errors. To disprove a theory logically, it is unnecessary to find all counterexamples to a theory; all that is required is one counterexample. The converse does not prove a theory; Bayesian inference simply makes a theory more likely, by weight of evidence. Since it is not possible to find all counter-examples to a theory, it is also possible to argue that no science is strictly empirical, but this is not the usual meaning of "quasi-empirical".