Corneel - you're quite right about Rob Lee's PMV-11 investigations, of course. It's not pure science, though it does seem to be about as close as anybody has come in recent years in the woodworking hand-tool field.
Jacob - if I did have unlimited time and money (ha ha!) to spend on scientific investigation, I'd look at what happens between a piece of toolsteel and a honing stone. What happens to the steel - pure abrasion, plastic deformation, or some combination of the two? - does abrasion happen by breaking of the grain boundaries, or are individual grains cut apart too? What is the effect of using different steels, or the same steel worked in different ways - multiple-strike forging, rolling, drop-forging or hydraulic pressing. I'd look at what happened to the abrasive, too; what's the influence of the abrasive, the bonding material, the different minerals in a natural stone. How exactly? Not really sure - start somewhere, and see where investigations led, I suppose. There might be some literature out there, but I haven't seen it yet.
Why? Curiosity, really. Like I said some posts ago, we know it works, but how and why? I rather doubt it would lead to much faster sharpening or better edges; such things would more than likely have been found by trial and error by now given the length of time craftsmen have been whapping tools up and down honing stones, but you never know. But - people keep making statements about tools and sharpening that have never really been properly investigated. For example, there was a slight difference of opinion in British Woodworking magazine a few months ago when David Savage stated his opinion that there has never been an equal to the old Sheffield tools for edge-taking ability. David Charlesworth begged to differ. It would be interesting to study things like that a bit, see if there's any facts to back up either's hunches. That's the beauty of science - you just never know for sure what you might find, and sometimes it might answer a few questions along those lines.