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|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|Prehistory=[[Karl Popper]]’s theory of scientific change took theories to be the units of scientific change. According to Popper, theories become accepted in accordance to the quantity of empirical content they present, and based on how many confirmed novel predictions they make.[[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]]
[[Thomas Kuhn]]'s theory of scientific change identified the ontological units of scientific change as frameworks which he referred to as ''paradigms'', which can be defined as a characteristic set of beliefs and preconceptions held by a scientific community including instrumental, theoretical, and metaphysical commitments all together.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]][[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977a)|pp. 293-319]] Kuhn himself confessed that he had confusingly used the term in several different senses.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977a)|pp. 293-294]] In an attempt to clarify matters he sought to replace his broadest definition of the paradigm, given above, with the concept of ''disciplinary matrices'', defined as those shared elements that account for the relatively unproblematic professional communication and relative unanimity of professional judgment within a scientific community.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977a)|p. 297]] For Kuhn, then, a theory of scientific change ought to deal with disciplinary matrices and their changes over time. While for Kuhn, paradigms or disciplinary matrices were primary, there was likewise confusion about the different stances a community might take towards a theory. Kuhn used a number of equally vague words, including ''universally received'', ''embraced'', ''acknowledged'', and ''committed'' to describe the status of theories within scientific communities.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)|pp. 10-13]]
In [[Imre Lakatos]]’ theory of scientific change, the ontological elements were individual scientific theories and his so-called scientific research programmes [[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)]] which were reducible to distinct families of scientific theories. For Lakatos, a scientific research programme consisted of all theories which shared a common hard core of empirical content and a peripheral protective belt of potentially distinct empirical content such that a small change in the protective belt would not impact the ontology of the theory. The hard core of empirical content constituted that which links together all theories in the research programme as subscribing to the same physical ontology. Within this framework, the units of scientific change are piecemeal changes in the peripheral elements of research programmes, and the rejection of these programmes themselves. The two epistemic stances present in Lakatos’ theory were progressive and regressive research programmes; a research programme was said to be progressive if its track record of change introduced additional empirical content, or which at least some was confirmed, and did so in a manner keeping with the “organic unity” of the research programme. A research programme was said to be regressive if its track record for change did not in general satisfy these conditions.
[[Larry Laudan]] also proposed a theory of scientific change, namely his reticulated modelmode[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)]]l, wherein there are scientific theories, scientific methods, and scientific values, all co-dependent. In this model, the epistemic elements are theories, methods, and values, and this model posits that the values of the community are reflected in the methods, and the methods determine which theories become accepted however, he also notes that the accepted theories influence which methods the community will employ, and can equally change the values of the community. In this respect, the reticulated model is a fully dynamic, covariant theory of scientific change wherein all epistemic elements influence one another. This was notably one of the first attempts at a theory of scientific change that included a dynamic method and acknowledged that such a dynamic method could itself be influenced by the theories that become accepted under it. A famous example illustrating how a theory may influence method of the time is in drug testing: at one time, there was an employed method that if a drug was tested on patients with a particular ailment, and their condition improved, then the drug was effective. However, a new theory became accepted, namely, that the body has natural healing abilities and so the method changed to reflect this; scientists instead tested their drugs against patients with the particular ailment, as well as against patients who did not have this ailment; the introduction of experimental controls reflects a theory-inspired change in the employed method of the time. Likewise, changes in methods and theories can impact the values of the scientific community. This illustrates the epistemic elements of Laudan’s reticulated model.
|History=Initially, the ontology of scientific change was posited in the ''Metatheory'' of ''[[Barseghyan (2015)|the LSC]]'' through the ''[[:Category:Definitional Topic|definition]]'' of [[Scientific Mosaic|scientific mosaic]] as a set of all accepted theories and employed methods.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 5]] Towards the end of 2016, it gradually became clear that the ontology of a field cannot and should not be postulated via definitions. What constitutes the elements of a certain ontology is for the respective empirical research to be established and, thus, is not a matter of definitions. In other words, the question of what constitutes the ontology of a certain field is a ''[[:Category:Descriptive Topic|descriptive question]]'', not definitional. Indeed, what sort of elements change during the process of scientific change is not something that should be decided by a definition, but should be formulated as a descriptive theory that says "Such-and-such elements undergo scientific change".
|Related Topics=Mechanism of Scientific Change,
