Changes

|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 Here we are no longer so interested in not concerned with judging the question truth or falsity of ''false'' beliefs , but are instead interested in rather with the question of how ''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 efforts are unsuccessful".[[CiteRef::Popper (1963)|p. 68]] Thus, Popper's approach suggested that 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). The difference More generally, differences between philosophers of science in during this period more generally was in their views on beliefs about how science changes; this in turn coloured their views about what factors (or mistakes) present in difference communities were relevant to divergent scientific beliefs. This form of thinking with regards to differences in assessment of thought on 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, Laudan, and Donovan (1988)|p. 4]]

It was with the emergence of not until after [[Thomas Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn's]] publication of his ''Structures Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' in the 1960s that the consensus about divergent beliefs was challenged.[[CiteRef::Bird (2008)]] Kuhn's "revolutionary" approach to scientific change radically diverged from his predecessors. On this view science has periods of ''normal science'' wherein the prevailing dogmas and core theories (the ''paradigm'') are unquestioned and science proceeds as a process of puzzle solving; this is followed . This can be interrupted by a ''crisis'' in which mounting anomalies cause scientists to question the theoretical foundations of the paradigm.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]] Crises may have no impact on normal science or they may result in a ''revolution'', ; which is what Kuhn calls "the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance".[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)|p. 84]] The present question of how divergent beliefs arise within communities fits nicely into this framework - a unified community starts by doing normal science, anomalies emerge within the paradigm, and a revolution occurs which splits the community. Subsequent work by philosophers in the field of scientific change would be coloured by the same kind of analysis of the historical record that shaped Kuhn's view of the subject, including the work done by [[Imre Lakatos]], [[Paul Feyerabend]], and [[Larry Laudan]].[[CiteRef::Laudan, Laudan, and Donovan (1988)|p. 5]]

One other approach to divergent community beliefs that deserves mention is the approach taken by the social sciences, namely the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) advanced principally by [[David Bloor]].[[CiteRef::Bloor (1976)]] SSK regards scientific activity to be indistinct from other kinds of as a kind human social activity and as such and area that falls under the purview of the social sciences.[[CiteRef::Longino (2015)]] As such, any divergence in community beliefs is the result of and explainable by sociological factors that contribute to belief formation.