Tautological Status of the First Law
Is the first law a tautology, i.e. can it in principle be violated?
As any law, the first law attempts to forbid certain courses of action, for otherwise it would lack any empirical content and would be a tautology. However, it is not quite clear whether the law in its current formulation can be contradicted by any conceivable situation. So the question is whether the law is tautological or non-tautological, i.e. whether there are circumstances (perhaps the collapse of the society which contains the scientific community) under which the first law can in principle be violated?
In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Nicholas Overgaard, Hakob Barseghyan, Gregory Rupik and Paul Patton in 2016. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.
Contents
Scientonomic History
Acceptance Record
Community | Accepted From | Acceptance Indicators | Still Accepted | Accepted Until | Rejection Indicators |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scientonomy | 1 January 2016 | The question became de facto accepted by the community at that time together with the whole theory of scientific change. | Yes |
All Theories
Theory | Formulation | Formulated In |
---|---|---|
The First Law (Barseghyan-2015) is Tautological (Pandey-2023) | The first law suggested by Barseghyan in 2015 is tautological. | 2023 |
If an answer to this question is missing, please click here to add it.
Accepted Theories
Suggested Modifications
Modification | Community | Date Suggested | Summary | Date Assessed | Verdict | Verdict Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sciento-2023-0003 | Scientonomy | 28 December 2023 | Accept that the first law and its corollaries are tautologies. Also accept that the rejection theorems are tautologies. | Open |
Current View
There is currently no accepted answer to this question.
Related Topics
This question is a subquestion of Mechanism of Scientific Inertia.