Changes

The notion that a general theory of scientific change can exist challenges the particularist approach to the history of science. Proponents of this approach included philosophers such as Shapin[[CiteRef::Shapin (1996)]] and Kuhn[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977)]], who would hold that, since each social interaction that qualifies as science is unique, and that the changes between such interactions would also be specific to the circumstances that brought them about, there could be no general theory of scientific change. Related to this concept is the division between the nomothetic sciences which, are concerned with discovering universal laws, and the idiographic sciences, which are concerned with describing features particular to a given individual phenomenon.[[CiteRef::Bunge (1998)]] It was not until a diagnosis by Hacking[[CiteRef::Hacking (1999) ]] that the the multi-headed nature of the social constructivist argument, and the problems it raised for the possibility of crafting a general theory of scientific change were clarified.

The nominalist thesis holds an instrumentalist view of science. It is instrumentalist, because it views all the propositions within a scientific mosaic to not be reflective of the inner structure of the world .[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (Barseghyan, 2015). ]] Furthermore, the theories of science cannot reflect how the world truly is, according to the nominalist stance, since the world-as-it-is lacks any inherent structure at all.

:The ontological reducibility thesis holds that higher levels of organization do not necessitate the introduction of new conceptual entities outside of what its lower levels are comprised of. With regards to the TSC, this thesis states that the subject matter of a general theory of scientific change is ontologically reducible to social constructs .[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (Barseghyan, 2015). ]]

:There are two major points against the epistemic reducibility thesis. First, there is the lack of a clear meaning behind “reduction” here at the theoretical level. Second, even if the epistemic reduction proposed by this thesis were possible, it would still have to furthermore prevent a proposed TSC from occurring .[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (Barseghyan, 2015). This lack ]] Lack of support for this thesis prevents it from barring the TSC from being possible.