Aligning the Scientific Method and the University to Industry 4.0 and Incoming Industry 5.0: Seven Unique Dimensions

Aristotle pioneered the scientific method (SM) 2,409 years ago, from 384-322 BCE. René Descartes renewed it 2,034 years later in 1650. But unattended long-term change has rendered the SM and its university delivery portal incapable of providing solutions to contemporary problems. Underpinned by the pragmatic paradigm. The dead horse theory (DHT), and the epistemological principle that knowledge be updated regularly for relevance and currency, the authors used heuristics and the literature review methods to add 7 dimensions, and assure the SM and the university’s mutual goal of providing apt solutions to the wicked problems of industry 4.0 and incoming industry 5.0. This is a conceptual paper. Findings: Conceptual additions and subtractions were the means by which the SM was renewed, kept current and relevant; It took 108 years, on average, to renew the SM yet the current version of the SM has not been updated in 375 years; Unattended change has rendered science, the SM and the university incapable of providing solutions to industry 4.0 problems; Science and the SM are not the only methods of discovery and knowing; For their methodological unilateralism, science and the SM have condemned discovery to lower order thinking skill (LOTS), and to the five limitations of the senses, mind thinking, inability to appropriately define simple concepts such as consciousness, the material realm and the silo of STEM subjects. Recommendation: Scientists, the Policy regime, and university professors and teachers have to become humble and admit that the past 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th-century science and version of the SM have run their due course, but that these have their limitations. The most viable solution is methodological triangulation, leading to the Biblical Scientific Method (BSM) for imparting society with the higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) needed to solve the wicked industry 4.0 and industry 5.0 problems.