Changes

|QuestionSubject=How do ''methods'' become ''employed'' by a community in theory assessment?Method Employment

|Subfield=Dynamics|Inherited From=|Heritable=No|Question Text Formula=|Question Title Formula=|Question=How do [[Method|methods]] become [[Norm Employment|employed]] by an epistemic agent?|Question Title=|Predicate=|Object Type=Text|Object Value True=|Object Value False=|Object Class=|Object Enum Values=|Object Regexp=|Single Answer Text Formula=|Multiple Answers Text Formula=|Answer Title Formula=|Description=When the classical philosophy of science finally came to terms with the fact that [[Method|methods ]] of theory assessment do in fact change through time, the question became ''how '' exactly they change. Since circa 1980, explaining the process of transitions from one employed method to the next has been one of the most challenging tasks for any theory of scientific change. A proper answer to this key question helps to understand shed light on one of the key aspects of scientific change.|Parent Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,

|Prehistory=Prehistory here|History=In A number of philosophers of science addressed the question of method employment before the context inception of scientonomy . [[Thomas Kuhn]], [[Paul Feyerabend]], [[Dudley Shapere]], [[Larry Laudan]], and [[Ernan McMullin]] all suggested that our theories about the answer to world shape our methods of theory evaluation. [[Thomas Kuhn]] can be credited by articulating this question has been traditionally provided by idea first in his [[Kuhn (1962a)|''the third lawStructure''. Until 2016 it was the third law as formulated by [[Hakob Barseghyan]]as part of his conception of paradigm shifts.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan Kuhn (20151962a)|p. 54]]

[[Dudley Shapere]] greatly developed the idea of beliefs affecting methods of theory evaluation in his [[Shapere (1980)|''The Character of Scientific Change'']], where he argued that the criteria scientists employ in theory assessment are not transcendent to science but are an integral part of it.[[CiteRef::Shapere (1980)]] Similarly, in his [[Laudan (1984a)|''Science and Values'']], [[Larry Laudan]] argued that the discovery of previously unaccounted effects (such as placebo effect or experimenter's bias) resulted in the formulation of new methods of drug testing.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|pp. 38-39]] The same idea has been expressed around the same time by [[Ernan McMullin]]. In his account of the transition from the Aristotelian Medieval method to the hypothetico-deductive method in the early 18th century, McMullin shows that the employment of the hypothetico-deductivism was a result of accepting that the world is more complex than it appears in our observations.[[CiteRef::McMullin (1988)|pp. 32-34]]  There have been many other attempts at explaining how methods of theory evaluation come to be employed by a community (e.g. the reconstructions of Plato’s method performed by [[David Lindberg]][[CiteRef::Lindberg (2007)|pp. 37-38]]).  [[Barry Barnes]], [[David Bloor]], [[Bruno Latour]], [[Steve Woolgar]] and other have suggested that methods of science are determined to a large degree by the underlying sociocultural factors.[[CiteRef::Latour and Woolgar (1979)]][[CiteRef::Barnes, Bloor, and Henry (1996)]] [[Paul Feyerabend]] went as far as to argue that in many cases methods are chosen in an arbitrary fashion.[[CiteRef::Feyerabend (1975a)]]|History=In the context of scientonomy the answer to this question has been traditionally provided by [[The Third Law|the third law]]. Until 2017 it was Barseghyan's [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)|original third law]].[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 54]] In that formulation, it wasn't clear whether employed methods follow from ''all'' or only ''some'' of the accepted theories and employed methods of the time. This led to a logical paradox which was [[Modification:Sciento-2016-0001|resolved]] by [[Zoe Sebastien]]. Sebastien in 's [[The Third Law (Sebastien-2016. In her )|reformulation of the law, Sebastien ]] made it explicit that an employed method need not necessarily follow from ''all'' other employed methods and accepted theories but only from ''some'' of them. [[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]] This made it possible for an employed method to be logically inconsistent and yet ''compatible'' with openly accepted [[Methodology|methodological dicta]]. Sebastien's formulation became accepted in 2017.|Current View=|Parent Topic=Mechanism of Norm Employment|Related Topics=Mechanism of Theory Acceptance, Role of Sociocultural Factors in Scientific Change,Method Employment|Sorting Order=300|Page Status=Editor Approved|Editor Notes=|Order=1

|Acceptance Indicators=That This is when the community accepted its first answer to this question, [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)]], which indicates that the question is itself considered legitimate.