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{{Topic|Subject=|Topic Type=Descriptive Topic|Subfield=Dynamics|Inherited From=|Heritable=No|Question Text Formula=|Question Title Formula=|Question=What is the actual mechanism of scientific change? How do epistemic agents take stances towards towards epistemic elements? How do changes in a scientific mosaic take place? What governs these changes?|Question Title=|Predicate=|Object Type=|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=This Along with the question of the [[Ontology of Scientific Change|ontology of scientific change]], this question is one of the two most general question questions of [[Scientonomy|scientonomy]]. It is safe to say that any general theory that attempts to explain changes in a certain domain normally has two major ingredients – an ontology of the entities and relations that populate the domain as well as some dynamics of how these entities and relations change over time. Scientonomy is no exception as it attempts to understand what sort of elements, agents, and stances, play part in the process of scientific change (ontology) and what the mechanism of these changes is (dynamics). Answering both of these questions is crucial for our understanding of the process of scientific change.|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan|Formulated Year=2015|Prehistory====Ludwik Fleck===[[Ludwik Fleck]], an epidemiologist, made one of the earliest attempts to understand scientific change as a social process, and to develop a conceptual framework for understanding how scientific communities function.[[CiteRef::Sady (2016)]] His most comprehensive work was ''Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact'' published in 1935.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] For Fleck, cognition was necessarily a collective social activity, since it depends on prior knowledge obtained from other people. New ideas arise within ''thought collectives'', which are groups of people who participate in the mutual exchange of ideas. As an emergent consequence of mutual understandings and misunderstandings within such a group a particular ''thought style'' arises. An established thought style carves the social world into an ''esoteric circle'' of expert members of the thought collective, and an ''exoteric circle'' who are outside the thought collective. How individual members of a thought collective think and perceive within the relevant domain is determined by the thought style. Scientific facts are socially constructed by thought collectives. Reality in itself cannot be known, but the thought style can be compared with reality through observation and experiment, and may be revised or abandoned on the basis of such interactions.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] [[CiteRef::Sady (2016)]] The thought style of a particular collective can , at most, be only partially understood by members of other collectives, and may be argued that all completely ''incommensurable'' with the thinking of some other collectives. ===Thomas Kuhn===Drawing partially on Fleck’s ideas, physicist and historian of science [[Thomas_Kuhn|Thomas Kuhn]] published his ideas about scientific change as ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' in 1962.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]] Kuhn spoke of ''scientific paradigms'', which are constellations of theoretical and metaphysical beliefs, values, methods, and instrumental techniques shared by a scientific discipline. A paradigm determines which questions are asked of the natural world by observation and experiment. Adherents to a paradigm engage in ''normal science'', which solves the puzzles needed to expand the range of scientonomy natural phenomena that can be explained using the paradigm. Eventually, ''anomalies'' may be unearthed. These are phenomena that recalcitrantly resist explanation in terms of the paradigm. If anomalies persist and grow in number, practitioners seek fundamentally new approaches. If a new approach is successful at resolving salient anomalies and is deemed to hold promise for solving new puzzles, a ''scientific revolution'' may result, in which a new paradigm replaces the old. Because paradigms are holistic networks of theories, methods, and values, they are ''incommensurable'' with one way or another, meaning that the terms and categories of the old paradigm cannot be translated into those of the other subnew. Adoption of a new paradigm thus appeared, especially to Kuhn’s critics, to involve a kind of non-questions rational leap of this most fundamental questionfaith.[[CiteRef::Bird (2011)]][[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]] ===Paul Feyerabend===In his [[Feyerabend (1975a)|Year Formulated''Against Method'']], published in 1975, philosopher [[Paul Feyerabend]], an epistemic anarchist, launched a much more radical attack on the idea of a fixed scientific method, and on the rationality of science.[[CiteRef::Feyerabend (1975a)]] On his account, science does not possess the regularities that would make a science of science and a theory of scientific change possible. Social constructivists likewise favored an historically contingent, relativist, and particularist view of science, which they supposed was incompatible with a coherent theory of scientific change. ===Irme Lakatos===2015Philosopher [[Imre_Lakatos|AuthorIrme Lakatos]], a proponent of the rationality of science and of a fixed scientific method launched a new account of scientific change with his ''Methodology of Scientific Research Programs'' in 1970.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)]] Lakatos sought to challenge both Kuhn and Feyerabend. He saw interrelated scientific theories as constituting ''research programs''. Unlike Kuhn, he believed that scientific fields typically host multiple competing research programs and rejected the idea of coherent unitary paradigms. Not all theoretical constituents of a research program were assigned equal importance. The ''hard core'' of a research program consisted of those theoretical claims that were indispensable to it. Adherents to a research program attempt to explain an increasingly wide range of natural phenomena in terms of the core claims. This is the ''positive heuristic'' of the research program. The ''protective belt'' consists of those theoretical assumptions that allowed the application of the hard core to an increasing range of cases. Scientists used their ingenuity to protect the hard core by making alterations to the protective belt so as to protect the core from falsification. The protection of the hard core is a research program's ''negative heuristic''. A ''progressive'' research program is one that makes successful novel predictions. A ''degenerating'' research program is one whose predictions repeatedly fail, and whose protective belt must be altered in an arbitrary, ad hoc fashion to protect the hard core from falsification. Lakatos rejected Kuhn’s distinction between normal and revolutionary science, and supposed that a revolution occurs when scientists simply switch allegiance from a degenerating research program to a progressive one.  ===Larry Laudan===Hakob In his 1984 ''Science and Values'' philosopher [[Larry_Laudan|Larry Laudan]] accepted growing empirical evidence that the methods of science had changed with time.[[CiteRef::Grobler (1990)]][[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)]] "Our views about the proper procedures for investigating the world", he wrote, "have been significantly affected by our shifting beliefs about how the world works".[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 39]] However he did not accept Feyerabend’s anarchism, or his view that a coherent theory of scientific change was impossible. Laudan proposed a ''reticulated model'' of scientific rationality in which other theories, methods, and research aims all interact in the assessment of a theory, with all three subject to alteration or replacement in the light of the others. Like Lakatos, he supposed that scientific theories were linked into logically related groups which he called ''research traditions'', and rejected the radical holism of Kuhnian paradigms. Laudan distinguished between the ''acceptance'' of a theory by a scientific community as the best available and ''pursuit'' of a theory as holding potential. Similar ideas were adopted as part of the Barseghyan theory of scientific change.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan,(2015)]]|PrehistoryHistory=TODO: Prehistory here|Current View=The |Parent Topic=|Related Topics=Ontology of Scientific Change|Page Status=Needs Editing|Editor Notes=|Order=1}}{{Acceptance Record|Community=Community:Scientonomy|Accepted From Era=CE|Accepted From Year=2016|Accepted From Month=January|Accepted From Day=1|Accepted From Approximate=No|Acceptance Indicators=This is when the community accepted its first answer to this question currently accepted in scientonomy is provided by , [[The Theory of Scientific Change|the theory of scientific change]], which indicates that the question itself is legitimate.|Still Accepted=Yes|Accepted Until Era=|Accepted Until Year=|Accepted Until Month=|Accepted Until Day=|Accepted Until Approximate=No|Rejection Indicators=