Which subdisciplines are you referring to? Psychology? Quantum science? Are these considered as strong as neuroscience today? And as far as I know the only central tenets of the material sciences are the 3 laws of thermodynamics. Even some of these have been challenged by other scientists.
Nah, I'm specifically thinking of the fields that I know best - ecology, conservation, land management. Reductionism just plain doesn't work when approaching those fields. It doesn't work when approaching environmental topics in general, from environmental science to climate science, which is why nobody uses it.
Can you recommend any books or papers? I understand the concepts behind the empirical method of science(repeatable, falsifiable, controls etc) but in science today it is not considered scientific if it is not empirical. And who is to say the immaterial world follows natural laws like the material world? It can however be studied as the unpopular Noetic sciences have shown.
I don't have any specific recommendations, no. Ironically, in spite of having studied specific sub-areas within the philosophy of science, I never actually had a formal overview of it in the broad sense, thus the broad formal theory of it isn't something I have specific resources for. Doesn't help that it's been a few years now since looking at such things.
Understand that I'm not suggesting that particular things can't be studied simply because they're beyond the scope of sciences. I'm quite an opponent of that sort of scientism - of taking the sciences as some sort of fundamentalist dogma and the only correct way of knowing the world. But I'm also an opponent of us calling something science when it isn't. I think we need to work more on recognizing the value and place of non-science. I like to think I'm in a unique position to do that as someone who has had both a scientific bent and an artistic bent for my entire life.