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This section of the article will be collapsed upon a reader’s entry to the webpage, so they will have to click to expand this section if they want access to this pre-historical information on the subject.
There is an important difference between the prehistory of a ''theory'' vs. the prehistory of a ''topic''.
* The prehistory of a '''topic''' covers ''all'' major attempts to answer the question, i.e. a topic’s prehistory aims to answer the question “who said what on that topic?”
* The prehistory of a '''theory''' must credit only those philosophers who had a similar idea. A theory’s prehistory addresses the question “who else had ideas similar to the ones expressed by the theory?” A theory’s prehistory therefore is not an opportune place to reiterate everything that has been already said in the topic’s prehistory.
For example, the prehistory of [[Mechanism of Theory Acceptance]] topic page should include all the majors philosophers and their views on theory acceptance. However, the prehistory of [[The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015)]] should only indicate those authors who also held that theories become accepted when they satisfy the requirements of the method employed at the time etc. It shouldn't list Popper’s or Lakatos’s of the world (which will surely feature in the topic’s prehistory), but will likely focus on Kuhn's ideas of theory assessment, Laudan’s reticulated model, Longino’s contextualism etc.
== History ==
