Changes

As in the later works of Larry Laudan [[CiteRef::Laudan (19841984a)]], the TSC rejects the idea of a fixed universal scientific method, and accepts the idea that the methods of science have changed over time. This rejection is based on clear evidence from the history of science that the methods of science have, in fact, changed [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 3-21]]. In contrast to most earlier views of the process of scientific change, TSC draws a clear distinction between methods, which are the implicit standards actually used in theory assessment, and the normative epistemic methodologies espoused by scientists or philosophers of science. The TSC takes normative methodological prescriptions to be outside its scope. It seeks a purely descriptive account of the methods employed by scientists to assess theories [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 12-21]]. Following the resolution of logical problems by Sebastien [[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]], it also views the descriptive study of scientific methodologies, and their relationship to employed methods, as within its scope. The TSC rejects Kuhn[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977)]]and Laudan's[[CiteRef::Laudan (19841984a)]] distinction between values and methods, asserting that values can more parsimoniously be included within the category of methods. Thus, the value of predictive accuracy is instead seen as the method 'accept theories that are predictively accurate'.

In his 1984 ''Science and Values'' philosopher [[Larry_Laudan|Larry Laudan]] accepted growing empirical evidence that the methods of science had changed with time.[[CiteRef::Grobler (1990)]] [[CiteRef::Laudan (19841984a)]] "Our views about the proper procedures for investigating the world", he wrote, "have been significantly affected by our shifting beliefs about how the world works".[[CiteRef::Laudan (19841984a)|p. 39]] However he did not accept Feyerabend’s anarchism, or his view that a coherent theory of scientific change was impossible. Laudan proposed a ''reticulated model'' of scientific rationality in which other theories, methods, and research aims all interact in the assessment of a theory, with all three subject to alteration or replacement in the light of the others. Like Lakatos, he supposed that scientific theories were linked into logically related groups which he called ''research traditions'', and rejected the radical holism of Kuhnian paradigms. Laudan distinguished between the ''acceptance'' of a theory by a scientific community as the best available and ''pursuit'' of a theory as holding potential. Similar ideas were adopted as part of the Barseghyan theory of scientific change.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]]