Changes

{{Theory

|Theory Type=Descriptive

|Formulation Text=The laws of scientific change govern the process of changes in a scientific mosaic, i.e. transitions from one theory to the next and one method to the next. The theory of scientific change explains many different aspects of the process such as theory acceptance and method employment, scientific inertia and compatibility, splitting and merging of scientific mosaics, scientific underdeterminism, changeability of scientific methods, role of sociocultural factors, and more.

|Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change

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)]]

}}

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