The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015)
This is an answer to the question Mechanism of Theory Acceptance that states "In order to become accepted into the mosaic, a theory is assessed by the method actually employed at the time."
This version of The Second Law was formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015.1
Broader History
TODO: Prehistory here
Scientonomic History
Acceptance Record
Community | Accepted From | Acceptance Indicators | Still Accepted | Accepted Until | Rejection Indicators |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scientonomy | 1 January 2016 | The law became de facto accepted by the community at that time together with the whole theory of scientific change. | No | 29 November 2017 | The law became rejected as a result of the acceptance of the new formulation of the Second Law by Patton, Overgaard, and Barseghyan. For details, refer to the modification. |
Suggestions To Reject
These are all the modifications where the rejection of this theory has been suggested:
Modification | Community | Date Suggested | Summary | Date Assessed | Verdict | Verdict Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sciento-2017-0004 | Scientonomy | 5 February 2017 | Accept the reformulation of the second law which explicitly links theory assessment outcomes with theory acceptance/unacceptance. To that end, accept three new definitions for theory assessment outcomes (satisfied, not satisfied, and inconclusive) as well as the new ontology of theory assessment outcomes, and accept the new definition of employed method. | 29 November 2017 | Accepted | The new formulation of the law became accepted as a result of a communal consensus. It was noted by the commentators that the "modification provides a much improved formulation of the 2nd law".c1 It was noted that the new formulation "decouples the method from acceptance outcomes" and "is needed to avoid a contradiction for cases where assessment by the method is inconclusive, but the theory is accepted".c2 It was agreed that the new law eliminates two of the major flaws of the previous formulation. First, it clearly states the relations between different assessment outcomes and the actual theory acceptance/unacceptance. Second, it clearly forbids certain conceivable courses of events and, thus, doesn't sounds like a tautology.c3 |
Question Answered
The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) is an attempt to answer the following question: How do theories become accepted into a mosaic?
See Mechanism of Theory Acceptance for more details.
Description
The key idea behind the second law is that theories are evaluated by the criteria employed by the community at the time of the evaluation. Thus, different communities employing different method of evaluation can end up producing different assessment outcomes.
TODO: Continue
The gist of this theory can be illustrated by the following examples.
Acceptance of General Relativity
The example is presented in The Laws of Scientific Change:
Even the most “revolutionary” theories must meet the actual requirements of the time in order to become accepted. Einstein’s general relativity is considered as one of the most ground-breaking theories of all time and, yet, it was evaluated in an orderly fashion and became accepted only after it satisfied the requirements of the time. From that episode we can reconstruct what the actual requirements of the time were. It is well known that the theory became accepted circa 1920, after the publication of the results of Eddington’s famous observations of the Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 which confirmed one of the novel predictions of general relativity – namely, the deflection of light in the spacetime curved due to the Sun’s mass. Thus, it is safe to say that the scientific community of the time expected (among other things) that a new theory must have confirmed novel predictions.1
Acceptance of Cartesian and Newtonian Theories
Another example from The Laws of Scientific Change:
Suppose we study the history of the transition from the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy to that of Descartes in France and that of Newton in Britain circa 1700. It follows from the second law that both theories managed to satisfy the actual expectations of the respective scientific communities, for otherwise they wouldn’t have become accepted.1
Reasons
Reason:
Barseghyan argued that the second law directly follows from the the definition of employed method. According to him, "since employed method is defined as a set of implicit criteria actually employed in theory assessment, it is obvious that any theory that aims to become accepted must meet these requirements".1 Thus, he argues, the second law is a mere explication of what is implicit in the definition of employed method.
This reason for The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) was formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015.1
If a reason supporting this theory is missing, please add it here.
Questions About This Theory
The following higher-order questions concerning this theory have been suggested:
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