 collected, etc.
As Laudan explains:
A theory solves an empirical problem when it entails, along with appropriate initial and boundary conditions, a statement of the problem [and] a theory solves a conceptual problem when it fails to exhibit a conceptual difficulty of its predecessor.
In an important way, philosophy as it is done by academic philosophers also conforms to this model. As you will see from a quick scan of philosophy journals, philosophers are responding to current problems and debating matters of method and concept in a way that cumulatively sorts good solutions to philosophical problems from bad ones and leaves a body of accepted knowledge in its wake, albeit one that is confined to particular research traditions. If we set aside for a moment the term ‘science’ and think instead about ‘enquiry’, we find common ground in the epistemic nature of what chemists do and what moral philosophers do. This doesn’t exactly vindicate the scientistic notion that all research should be ‘scientific’, but it does suggest that there is something deeper about what scientists do that makes their enquiries into the world especially conducive to the production of good knowledge, and that one doesn’t need to use special instruments or mathematics to follow their lead on many issues not typically thought of as falling within the domain of science.
In other words, the notion that science will bring us all the answers is unforgivably ignorant and daft. But thoroughgoing, self-conscious, critical problem-solving carried out within a community of investigators committed to producing a kind of public knowledge need not be the sole province of STEM practitioners, but can provide a model for tackling all sorts of puzzles and dilemmas, including those that cannot be resolved in any final sense by reference to empirical fact.
As exemplified by Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Larry Laudan, who all wrote extensively on the nature of scientific practice.
 In the social sciences, where theorising does not take place entirely within one settled paradigm or tradition, but rather features multiple competing, contrasting, and often non-interacting modes of enquiry, active reflection upon fundamental assumptions happens more frequently. Probably not frequently enough though.
 Indeed, Sam Harris’s own modest publication shows just such an engagement.
 For example, by the appearance an anomaly in the course of research that needs to be investigated and theorised.
 For example, enquiries into gender or welfare or climate change that are driven by political or moral concerns related to society as a broader whole, but are still conducted ‘scientifically’ rather than, say, polemically.