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|Prehistory=Traditionally the topic of why communities of scientists accept different theories has been an enigma for historians and philosophers of science, although the problem has been known about for some time. In the ''Categories'' for example, Aristotle grappled with the question of false belief and how false beliefs came to be acquired, and the significance of the question for science and epistemology.[[CiteRef::Miller (2013)|pp.289-290]] While it is true that we are no longer so interested in the question of ''false'' beliefs but are instead interested in the question of ''divergent'' beliefs the central question of how different beliefs arise in epistemic communities remains the same.
Pre-Kuhnian philosophers' typical response to divergent community beliefs has largely depended on their views of scientific change more generally. An example of this is the work of [[Karl Popper]]. Popper regarded scientific change as being a process of conjectures and refutations, "of boldly proposing theories; of trying our best to show that these are erroneous; and of accepting them tentatively if our critical efforts are unsuccessful."[[CiteRef::Popper (1963)|p.68]] Thus, any difference in the beliefs of certain communities could be chalked up to differences either in available knowledge (whether a conjecture had been refuted) or a difference in experimental methods (whether the same criteria were being applied in refutations). This form of thinking with regards to differences of thought with regards to scientific theories - if not the exact formulation it takes - was generally held by "positivists" or "logical empiricists" and accepted until the historical turn in the 1960s.[[CiteRef::Laudan et al , Laudan, and Donovan (1988)|p.4]]
|History=This question was proposed by [[Hakob Barseghyan]] in 2015 with the publishing of the ''Laws of Scientific Change''.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]]
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