Draft:"Scientific Mystery"


A scientific mystery is a natural phenomenon that can be described, but not explained. The most famous of these is the ancient "mind-body problem", which is the challenge of explaining subjective (1st person) experience in scientific (3rd person) terms. A scientific mystery is not just an unsolved problem, but one with no known approach. Across the various sciences, the notion of mystery takes on radically different forms, with profound effects on theory and experiment in that field.

In striking contrast, there is almost no explicit study of scientific mysteries in the social and life sciences (except biology). There are identified unsolved problems (ref), but these are not labeled as mysteries. There seems to be no consensus on why, but it certainly depends in part on the profundity of the mind-body problem.


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References

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  1. ^ Fox1, Goodale2, Bourne3, Melvyn1, James2 (2020). "The Age-Dependent Neural Substrates of Blindsight". Trends in Neuroscience43. 43 (1).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

2. ^Iriki, A. et al. (1996) Coding of modified body schema during tool use by macaque postcentral neurones. Neuroreport. 1996 Oct 2;7(14):2325-30.