Mechanism of Theory Acceptance

{{Topic |Question=How do theories become accepted into a mosaic? |Topic Type=Descriptive |Description=The question of theory acceptance is one of the central problems of theoretical scientonomy. Any scientonomic theory should explain how theories become part of a mosaic. Initially, when philosophy had a static conception of science, this question did not exist. However, as science progressed, it soon became clear that science replaces its theories with theories that it considers superior, and it does this on a continuous basis. At this point, how science accepts theories became a central question for the philosophy of science. Answering this question is not trivial, because all of the obvious answers, such as verisimilitude and best fit to the data, all come with philosophical problems. The difficulty of solving the problem was compounded when it was realized that the methods by which theories are accepted changes over time.

One historical example of theory acceptance was when heliocentrism replaced Ptolemaic Astronomy. Another example was when the General Theory of Relativity replaced the Classical Mechanics initially developed by Isaac Newton. |Parent Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change |Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan, |Formulated Year=2015 |Prehistory=This question has been one of the central questions of the classic philosophy of science. It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that no philosopher of science could bypass this issue.

Initially, philosophy held a static conception of science. Immanuel Kant believed that the axioms of Newtonian Mechanics were a priori synthetic propositions. Philosophy believed in a static conception of science because no scientific revolution had been experienced since the advent of modern science. While Scientonomy recognizes the transition from the Aristotilian-Medieval method to the Newtonian world view as a scientific revolution, this was not the case historically.

The scientific revolutions in the early twentieth century caused philosophers of science to being asking the question of how science accepts its theories. The first answer was given by Karl Popper in his Logic of Scientific Discovery. Popper believed old theories replaced by new theories when an old theory is falsified and a new theory is accepted in its place. This occurs in a crucial experiment that successfully tests a bold conjecture made by the new theory.

The importance of novel predictions in theory acceptance was also stressed by Imre Lakatos. However, he believed that theories are not necessarily falsified by bad predictions. Rather, a theory's fate depends on its place in the research program. The more central a theory is to its research program, the more it can be saved by modifying auxiliary hypotheses.

The next significant development occurred when Thomas Kuhn suggested in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that theory changes are paradigm shifts, where the world view of the entire scientific community changes. In his conception of theory change, the old and new theories are incommensurable.

Paul Feyerabend argued in Against Method that the methods of theory acceptance change over time in science. He argued that these changes were largely arbitrary. Dudley Shapere agreed that scientific methods change over time. In The Character of Scientific Change, Shapere argued that the scientific methods used at the time are affected by the beliefs the scientific community holds.

Larry Laudan also agreed. In Science and Values, Laudan argues that the methods that scientific theories are accepted depend on the values that scientists have. He recounted how knowledge of experimenters bias and the placebo effect led to the development of the double blind method in drug testing. many of the ideas promoted by Laudan are important precursors to Scientonomy.

In contrast the Sociologist of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) research program, including sociologists like [[Barry Barnes] and David Bloor believe that scientists are motivated to a large extent by non-empirical social values. |Related Topics=Mechanism of Method Employment, }}