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Necessary Method theorem (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 20:46, 10 March 2018
, 20:46, 10 March 2018no edit summary
{{PrintDiagramFile|diagram file=Necessary-method-theorem.jpg}}
To better illustrate this example, we can imagine a community with a set of accepted propositions.
Community φ accepts proposition α. For α to have become accepted, through the second law, we know that φ must have had implicit expectations which α satisfied. No matter what those expectations are, if the community had not harbored those expectations there could be no acceptance.
Similarly, if we have a community φ which experiences a change of expectations (i.e. a change of method), it is deductively true that φ already had a set of expectations which could be referred to as a method.
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=Insofar as necessary methods go, the philosophy of science was initially not very concerned with this subject. Philosophers like the logical positivists, [[Karl Popper]], and all those up until [[Thomas Kuhn]] held the general tacit belief that there was a singular method of science and that all scientific communities would abide by it. This method was inherently necessary because science was exclusively a function of it; to believe otherwise would imply irrationality in science. For example, with Popper, theories were accepted on a basis of falsification and corroborated content.[[CiteRef::Popper (1963)]] During this time, anything accepted without a method of acceptance was simply unscientific.
