Epistemic Elements - Theories Methods and Questions (Rawleigh-2018)

An attempt to answer the question of Epistemic Elements which states "The three classes of elements that can undergo scientific change are theories, methods, and questions."

Epistemic Elements - Theories Methods and Questions was formulated by William Rawleigh in 2018.1

History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of Epistemic Elements - Theories Methods and Questions (Rawleigh-2018):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	26 September 2018	The ontology became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective suggested modification.	No	1 September 2019	The ontology became rejected when it was replaced by Epistemic Elements - Questions and Theories (Barseghyan-2018).

Suggestions To Accept

Here are all the modifications where the acceptance of this theory has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2018-0002	Scientonomy	12 May 2018	Accept the ontology of epistemic elements with theories, methods, and questions as distinct epistemic elements.	Accepted	Following several focused discussions - both in-person and on the discussion page of this modification - it was finally decided that the modification is to be accepted. Three important clarifications were made. First, it was noted that Rawleigh only shows that questions cannot be reduced either to methods or to theories, but it is still conceivable "that questions may be functions of both theories and methods simultaneously".c1 Second, it was decided that accepting the modification is still warranted, since currently we don't have any idea how questions could be reduced to a conjunction of theories and methods.c2 Third, scientonomists are actively encouraged to pursue the question of possibility of reducing questions to a conjunction of theories and methods.c3	26 September 2018

Suggestions To Reject

These are all the modifications where the rejection of the theory has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2018-0006	Scientonomy	8 October 2018	Accept the new ontology of epistemic elements with, theories and questions are the two basic epistemic elements where and each theory is an attempt to answer a certain question, theories can be of three types – descriptive, normative, or definitions, and methods are a subtype of normative theory.	Accepted	Following a series of off-line discussions, a consensus emerged concerning this modification: it was agreed that the modification is to be accepted.c1 It was mentioned that most of the elements of this new ontology "has already been accepted by the scientonomic community".c2 It was also stressed that "the consensus has been manifested on several occasions, including the first scientonomy conference in May 2019 in Toronto, where several of the presenters treated this new ontology as accepted."c3 The fact that the consensus concerning this modification has been achieved primarily off-line, i.e. outside of the discussion pages of this encyclopedia suggests that the scientonomic "workflow must have a way of accommodating these discussions".c4	1 September 2019

Question Answered

Epistemic Elements - Theories Methods and Questions (Rawleigh-2018) is an attempt to answer the following question: What are the fundamental epistemic elements that undergo scientific change?

See Epistemic Elements for more details.

Description

This formulation expands the ontology proposed by Sebastien by introducing questions as a separate epistemic element not reducible to either theories or methods. Thus, theories, methods, and questions are the three basic elements that undergo scientific change.

The addition of questions to the ontology of epistemic elements is intended to bring the accepted ontology of epistemic elements more closely in line with a) actual scientific practice, in which questions seem to be distinct elements, and b) the ontology implicit in the Encyclopedia of Scientonomy. The ontology implicit in the Encyclopedia of Scientonomy is arranged such that every theory is associated with a topic, which the theory is meant to answer. The addition of questions to the ontology of epistemic elements allows the integration of topics into our theoretical ontology, which is not presently equipped to do so.

Reasons

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