From Scientific Recognition to Scientific Explanation: Organising Investigation of Long-Term Military Environmental Contamination

Abstract

Military environmental contamination represents a distinctive class of empirical objects whose long-term development frequently exceeds the explanatory capacity of existing disciplinary frameworks. Although contemporary investigations generate increasingly sophisticated analytical data, the scientific recognisability of the developing environmental process often remains incomplete. The principal methodological challenge therefore concerns not the absence of empirical information.

This paper proposes an operational architecture for research conducted under such conditions. Rather than treating mature explanatory theory as the necessary starting point of investigation, the proposed framework examines how scientific inquiry may be organised during the pre-theoretical stage of research. The manuscript introduces a sequence of interconnected operational concepts: the Pre-Theoretical Domain, Scientific Recognition, Persistent Scientific Uncertainty, Scientific Navigation, Relational Field, Process Morphology, Morphological Cognitive Openness, Explanatory Possibilities, and Scientific Explanation. These concepts are presented as successive stages in the progressive organisation of empirical investigation.

Within the proposed framework, scientific explanation is understood as the outcome of Scientific Recognition rather than its point of departure. Investigation advances through the progressive organisation of empirical observations, relationships, and process morphology while maintaining correspondence with the continuing development of the investigated object. 

The proposed architecture does not replace existing disciplinary methods or explanatory theories. Instead, it provides an operational framework through which disciplinary knowledge may progressively contribute to the scientific recognition of highly dynamic empirical processes. Although developed for long-term military environmental contamination, the framework may also be applicable to other complex environmental processes whose empirical development precedes the emergence of sufficiently mature explanatory theory.