Encyclopedia of Scientonomy

Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Scientonomy

the clearing house for the scientonomic knowledge on the process of scientific change that aims at

outlining the current state of our communal knowledge of the mechanism of scientific change;
tracing all suggested modifications to our communal knowledge;
documenting the open questions concerning the process of scientific change.

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Featured Article

What is the broader relevance of scientonomy? How can scientonomy inform other fields of inquiry? In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Paul Patton in 2018. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community. At the moment, the question has no accepted answer in Scientonomy. At the moment, the question has no accepted answer in Scientonomy.

In the news

The modification was discussed during the 2024 workshop. Firstly, the similarity between this definition and the recently accepted modification suggesting a definition of epistemic tool was highlighted by the community as an indicator that this modification might require further work to separate out its definitional content from dynamics content before it could be accepted. However, most of the discussion surrounding the modification concerned, as Jamie Shaw put it, whether the distinction between authority delegation and tool reliance was a distinction without a difference. Deivide Garcia suggested that there is a meaningful difference between the two: epistemic tools are inherently passive, whereas epistemic agents inherently play an active role both in tool reliance and in authority delegation. Paul Patton highlighted several examples of “troubleshooting” epistemic tools in the history of science, which is suggestive of a relationship between the epistemic agent and the epistemic tool that differs significantly from the relationship between two epistemic agents in an authority delegation relation. Yet, Hakob Barseghyan highlighted that the process of troubleshooting of tools could be conceptualized in different terms very similar to how scientonomers already describe authority delegation relations. Joshua Allen suggested that the modification would be useful to accept anticipating further work being done on the relationship between epistemic tools and epistemic actions. Ultimately, after most participants agreed that the modification was useful in its current state, the modification was accepted with over 2/3rds majority (11 votes to accept, 4 votes to keep the modification open).

At the 2024 workshop, there was minimal discussion of this modification, as workshop participants were generally in favor of its acceptance. Jamie Shaw and Hakob Barseghyan expressed some misgivings about the definition and hoped that it could be made more succinct in the future. Specifically, it was noted that this formulation might in fact be a theorem or a law explaining how tools become epistemic tools rather than a definition. Yet, given this was the community’s only proposed definition of epistemic tool, they saw it as worth accepting with that caveat. Rebecca Muscant’s comment about what happens with systems of tools, as well as specifications that the definition only applies to physical tools (in the case of AI, only the hardware, not the software is a tool), further highlighted the need for the community to clarify the dynamics content implied by the definition in the future. At this point, the modification was accepted unanimously.

During 2024 workshop, Andrew Wong noted that he was already using the noun-adjective pairs that this modification concerns to train AI models for the future scientonomy database project. Although Stephanie Cui pointed out that these pairs were from the RSC and as such might not be as relevant for investigating scientific change in different cultures and time periods, she still agreed that this was an excellent starting point. Hakob Barseghyan also noted that there was not as much at stake in accepting the modification as there would be in rejecting it (and essentially stating that the RSC pairs cannot ever be indicative of communal theory acceptance). Andrew Chung suggested that involving other scholars in the digital humanities could help us further refine our use of corpus linguistics strategies in the future. Thus, the acceptance of this modification would bring interdisciplinary benefits for scientonomers too. The modification was accepted unanimously (15/15 votes to accept).

Recent Suggested Modifications (all)

Recent Publications (check out the journal)

Abstract: This paper applies Patton and Al-Zayadi’s scientonomic framework for understanding disciplines to a case study of the development of the chemical discipline ("chymistry") from the 17th century through the early 18th century in Western Europe. Using evidence from the tradition of textbook publication that emerged in the seventeenth-century chymistry, we reconstruct the top-level of the question hierarchy of chymistry. Analyzing how these questions and their associated theories were received, we first show how, starting in the 1660s, alchemy transitioned from a synonym of chymistry to chymistry’s subdiscipline with a more limited scope. We identify that the rejection of alchemy's core questions occurred in the 1720s based on the reception of these questions in scientific publications and by academic institutions. Hence, we conclude that the subdiscipline of alchemy became rejected in the 1720s. In order to conduct our case-study, we closely follow Newman and Principe's research on early modern alchemy and chymistry in our reconstruction of the episode. However, using the scientonomic framework in analyzing this case study reveals the specific dynamics of this instance of sub-discipline rejection. Our deepened understanding of this hallmark historical episode of disciplinary rejection indicates the value of Patton and Al-Zayadi’s theoretical framework for observational scientonomic research.

Abstract: In a series of publications, Hasok Chang makes the case that activities carried out by epistemic agents form the basis of the scientific enterprise. This paper provides an action-based scientonomic perspective of scientific practice. I define epistemic action as an action of an epistemic agent that involves an epistemic element and highlight the difference between global and local actions. The availability of a local action to an epistemic agent amounts to the agent employing the norm that the local action is permissible/desirable. To unearth the mechanism by which local actions become available to epistemic agents, I derive the local action availability theorem, according to which, a local epistemic action becomes available to an agent only when its permissibility is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the agent’s mosaic, i.e., from that agent’s employed norms and accepted theories. This framework is then applied to the emergence of the local action of determining the composition of chemical substances by weighing as practiced by Lavoisier and his followers; it is shown that the respective norm became employed in accord with the local action availability theorem.

Abstract: The paper investigates the applicability of corpus linguistics to the construction of a database of intellectual history. Working with the Royal Society Corpus (RSC), it presents a series of corpus queries that can aid with computationally identifying potential instances of communal theory acceptance in England during the period of 1665-1800. These queries allowed to identify a set of noun-adjective pairs potentially synonymous with “accepted theory” and retrieve around 1,400 excerpts potentially indicative of instances of communal theory acceptance. The paper also discusses some strategies for identifying the epistemic agent, as well as the RSC’s place within the broader historical context. Finally, I argue that, in addition to exploring corpus linguistics strategies, methodologies for interpreting computationally retrieved data should also be developed.