Modification:Sciento-2022-0001

Accept a new model-theoretic definition of scientific mosaic, according to which, a scientific mosaic is a model of all epistemic elements accepted or employed by the epistemic agent.

The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by William Rawleigh on 28 February 2022.1 The modification was accepted on 21 February 2024.

Preamble

The notion of scientific mosaic is central to scientonomy and intends to capture the state of an agent’s scientific knowledge at a given point in time. The currently accepted definition of the term, “a set of all epistemic elements accepted and/or employed by an epistemic agent”, is a syntactic definition that fails to provide a theoretically robust investigational framework that would allow scientonomists to fruitfully explore mosaics and their minutiae. Pressingly, this definition leaves open some troubling semantic questions about the nature of deducibility and meaning within scientonomy’s theoretical framework. This modification aims to remedy the problem by proposing a semantic definition of scientific mosaic.

Modification

Theories To Accept

• Scientific Mosaic (Rawleigh-2022): A model of all epistemic elements accepted or employed by the epistemic agent.

Theories To Reject

• Scientific Mosaic (Barseghyan-2018): A set of all epistemic elements accepted and/or employed by an epistemic agent.

Questions Answered

This modification attempts to answer the following question(s):

• Scientific Mosaic: What is scientific mosaic? How should it be defined?

Verdict

The modification was accepted on 21 February 2024. Nobody submitted opinions on this modification to the encyclopedia prior to the 2024 workshop. At the workshop, most of the discussion focused around the differences in wording between the earlier definition of scientific mosaic and the new one as formulated by Rawleigh. It was clarified that there is little difference in meaning between the definitions, but Rawleigh’s modification addressed the concern that the old language for describing a scientific mosaic was couched in terms of set theory, which Jamie Shaw pointed out would pose a problem for how we typically talk about mosaics (classifying mosaics by their number of elements is not particularly helpful for scientonomers). The new model-theoretic definition seemed more intuitive to some members of the community, even though neither definition commits to any syntactic view of theories. Some members of the community did not vote on the modification given their lack of experience with set theory, but overall the modification was accepted by over a two-thirds majority of voters. 13 out of 15 votes were to accept.

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