Question Is a Subtype of Epistemic Element (Rawleigh-2018)

This is a theory that states "Question is a subtype of Epistemic Element, i.e. epistemic element is a supertype of question."

Question Is a Subtype of Epistemic Element (Rawleigh-2018) was formulated by William Rawleigh in 2018.1 It is currently accepted by Scientonomy community as the best available answer to the question.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of Question Is a Subtype of Epistemic Element (Rawleigh-2018):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	26 September 2018	The theory became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective suggested modification.	Yes

Suggestions To Accept

Here are all the modifications where the acceptance of this theory has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2018-0002	Scientonomy	12 May 2018	Accept the ontology of epistemic elements with theories, methods, and questions as distinct epistemic elements.	Accepted	Following several focused discussions - both in-person and on the discussion page of this modification - it was finally decided that the modification is to be accepted. Three important clarifications were made. First, it was noted that Rawleigh only shows that questions cannot be reduced either to methods or to theories, but it is still conceivable "that questions may be functions of both theories and methods simultaneously".c1 Second, it was decided that accepting the modification is still warranted, since currently we don't have any idea how questions could be reduced to a conjunction of theories and methods.c2 Third, scientonomists are actively encouraged to pursue the question of possibility of reducing questions to a conjunction of theories and methods.c3	26 September 2018

Questions Answered

Question Is a Subtype of Epistemic Element (Rawleigh-2018) is an attempt to answer the following questions: Subtypes of Epistemic Element and Supertypes of Question.

Description

A study of the process of scientific change reveals many cases when a question that was considered legitimate in a certain time-period became illegitimate in another period. For example, the questions such as “what is the weight of phlogiston?” or “why does some matter gain mass as it loses phlogiston?” were accepted as legitimate topics of inquiry for the most part of the 18th century. Yet, once the phlogiston theory was rejected, these questions became illegitimate. Another examples is the question “what is the distance from the earth to the sphere of stars?” that was once considered legitimate by astronomers, but is no longer accepted.1p. 4

Similarly, there are questions which are considered legitimate these days but weren't accepted even a few centuries ago. An example of this is the question “what’s the underlying mechanics of the evolution of species?” - a perfectly legitimate topic of biological research nowadays that would have been deemed illegitimate three hundred years ago.1p. 4

These examples suggest that questions are part of the process of scientific changes. More specifically, they are a subtype of epistemic element.

Reasons

No reasons are indicated for this theory.

If a reason supporting this theory is missing, please add it here.