Changes

{{Descriptive Theory

|Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change

|Description====What is the theory of scientific change?===

[[File:Scientific change.jpg|right|475px]]

The role of methodologies in shaping methods under the TSC is indicated by the third law, under which the employed method is strictly determined by other methods and accepted theories of the time. A methodology can shape employed methods, but only if its requirements implement abstract requirements of some other employed method[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.240-243]]

[[File:methodology-shapes-method.jpg|center|500px]].

|Prehistory====Ludwig Fleck 'Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact' 1935===

[[Fleck (1979)|Ludwig Fleck]], an epidemiologist, made one of the earliest attempts to understand scientific change as a social process, and to develop a conceptual framework for understanding how scientific communities function.[[CiteRef::Sady (2016)]] His most comprehensive work was 'Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact' published in 1935.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] For Fleck, cognition was necessarily a collective social activity, since it depends on prior knowledge obtained from other people. New ideas arise within ''thought collectives'', which are groups of people who participate in the mutual exchange of ideas. As an emergent consequence of mutual understandings and misunderstandings within such a group a particular ''thought style'' arises. An established thought style carves the social world into an ''esoteric circle'' of expert members of the thought collective, and an ''exoteric circle'' who are outside the thought collective. How individual members of a thought collective think and perceive within the relevant domain is determined by the thought style. Scientific facts are socially constructed by thought collectives. Reality in itself cannot be known, but the thought style can be compared with reality through observation and experiment, and may be revised or abandoned on the basis of such interactions.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] [[CiteRef::Sady (2016)]] The thought style of a particular collective can, at most, be only partially understood by members of other collectives, and may be completely ''incommensurable'' with the thinking of some other collectives.

===Larry Laudan 'Science and Values' 1984===

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 (1984)]] "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 (1984)|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)]]

|History=The ''theory of scientific change'' (TSC) was proposed by Hakob Barseghyan in ''The Laws of Scientific Change'', published in 2015.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]]

In 2016, Zoe Sebastien resolved an important logical paradox, which necessitated a [[Modification:Sebastien-2016-001|change]] to the [[The_Third_Law|third law of scientific change]].[[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]] At the same time, the definition of [[Theory|''theory'']] was also [[Modification:Sebastien-2016-002|modified]] to include not only descriptive propositions but also normative propositions (e.g. normative scientific methodologies, ethical beliefs, etc.). As a result, the scope of the TSC was expanded to include also normative beliefs accepted by a community.

}}