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Contextual Appraisal theorem (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 20:10, 24 February 2023
, 20:10, 24 February 2023no edit summary
Consider a situation wherein "the proponents of some alternative quantum theory argue that the currently accepted theory is no better than their own quantum theory".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 185]] But, importantly, we notice that they are taking theory assessment out of its ''historical context''! "Particularly," Barseghyan comments, "they ignore the phenomenon of scientific inertia – they ignore that, in order to remain in the mosaic, the accepted theory doesn’t need to do anything (by ''the first law'' for theories) and that it is their obligation to show that their contender theory is better (by ''the second law'')".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 185]]
|Example Type=Hybrid
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{{Theory Example
|Title=Galileo's heliocentricism
|Description=The depiction of Galileo as a hero, standing up against church authorities to present his "clearly superior" position, is well-known.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 187]] However, as Barseghyan rightly notes, it fails to take the contemporaneous ''scientific mosaic'' of Galileo's community into account. The traditional account, placing both theories aganist each other in a vacuum, "failed to appreciate both that theory assessment is an assessment of a proposed modification and that a theory is assessed by the method employed at the time. Once we focus our attention on the state of the scientific mosaic of the time," though, "it becomes obvious that the scientific community of the time simply couldn’t have acted differently".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 188]]
Let's consider the ''scientific mosaic'' circa the 1610s. It consisted of many interconnected Aristotelian-medieval theories, including ''geocentrism,'' which "was a deductive consequence of the Aristotelian law of natural motion and the theory of elements".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 188]]
So, "it was impossible to simply cut geocentrism out of the mosaic and replace it with heliocentrism – the whole Aristotelian theory of elements would have to be rejected as well. And it was only made more difficult because "the theory of elements itself was tightly connected with many other parts of the mosaic," such as the ''possibility of transformation of elements'' and the medical theory of the time (four humours).[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 189]] "In short," summarizes Barseghyan, "in order to make the rejection of geocentrism possible, a whole array of other elements of the Aristotelian-medieval mosaic would have to be rejected as well".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 189]]
Now by ''the first law for theories'' and ''the theory rejection theorem'', "only the acceptance of an alternative set of theories could defeat the theories of the Aristotelian-medieval mosaic".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 189]] "Unfortunately for Galileo," concludes Barseghyan, "at the time there was no acceptable contender theory comparable in scope with the theories of the Aristotelian-medieval mosaic ... Galileo didn’t have an acceptable replacement for all the elements of the mosaic that had to be rejected together with geocentrism ... The traditional interpretation of this historical episode failed to appreciate this important point and, instead, preferred to blame the dogmatism of the clergy".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 189]]
Another key problem with the typical presentation of this episode is its assessment, "not by the implicit requirements of the time, but by the requirements of the hypothetico-deductive method, which became actually employed a whole century after the episode took place. Namely, Galileo was said to have shown the superiority of the Copernican heliocentrism by confirming some of its novel predictions," which, by the traditional account, was considered "a clear-cut indication of the superiority of the Copernican hypothesis".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 189]]
Yet, Barseghyan's more careful study of the episode reveals the following: "the requirements of hypothetico-deductivism had little in common with the actual expectations of the community of the time. Although the task of reconstructing the late Aristotelian-medieval method of natural philosophy is quite challenging and may take a considerable amount of labour, one thing is clear: the requirement of confirmed novel predictions was not among implicit expectations of the community of the time. Back then, theories simply didn’t get assessed by their confirmed novel predictions".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 189-90]] And we note that important point becomes apparent through the ''contextual appraisal theorem''.
|Example Type=Historical
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