Current Methodologies of Physics & Astronomy

Regarding the correct division and method of the sciences, this lecture, given at the American Astronomical Society (AAS)'s January 2008 meeting in Austin, Texas, highlights the current state of the methodologies in two branches of physical science (specif. scientia media), astronomy and physics.

[Duhem] seems to regard [the non-falsifiability theses, which "is that 'if the predicted phenomenon is not produced, not only is the questioned proposition put into doubt, but also the whole theoretical scaffolding used by the physicist' (Duhem 185),"] as an obvious corollary of another thesis, which could be called the non-separability thesis, that the physicist can never submit an isolated hypothesis to experimental test: “To seek to separate each of the hypotheses of theoretical physics from the other assumptions upon which this science rests, in order to subject it in isolation to the control of observation, is to pursue a chimera” (Duhem 199-200).

—Roger Ariew, "Pierre Duhem"

Modern scientists do indeed consider issues pertaining to this, else their science's arguments risk being circular.