Changes

Jump to navigation Jump to search
no edit summary
|Question=What role do '''methodologies''' play in scientific change? Are methodologies capable of affecting employed methods?
|Topic Type=Descriptive
|Description=TODO: DescriptionThe explicitly prescribed requirements for theory acceptance are often different than the implicit requirements of theory acceptance within any given scientific community. It is currently accepted that the implicit expectations can change the explicit requirements. However, the question of whether methodologies can affect the implicit methods employed by a given scientific community is unsettled. [[Methodology Can Shape Method theorem (Barseghyan-2015)]] states that a methodology can influence employed methods, if its requirements implement abstract requirements of some other employed method. This raises the questions what is the role of methodologies in facilitating scientific change and can methodologies affect employed methods?
|Parent Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change
|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|Prehistory=Traditionally, philosophers of science have conflated the roles of methods and methodologies. This conflation can be traced back to [[William Whewell]]’s [[Whewell (1840)|''The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences'']], in which it is proposed that philosophy of science both describes the essence of knowledge and advocates its best methods.[[CiteRef::Whewell (1840)]] [[Thomas Kuhn’s Kuhn]]’s conceptions of paradigms and scientific revolutions also possessed both descriptive and normative connotations.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (19621962a)]] Similarly, [[Imre Lakatos’ Lakatos]]’ methodology of scientific research programmes and Larry Laudan’s problem-oriented methodology, expressed in his early works, are is constructed simultaneously as descriptions of methods of science and methodologies regulating what scientists ought to do.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)]][[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a1971)|p. 91]] Many contemporary authors working in the field inherited this view from Kuhn, Lakatosand other classics of the genre.  [[Paul Feyerabend]] for instance gives many examples of how the practice of famous scientists were often at odds with the prescriptions of scientific methodologies that philosophers of science have produced over time. [[CiteRef::Feyerabend (1975a)|p. 14]] Individual famous scientists were often used in the examples due to the assumption that their practices exemplified the expectations of the actual community.[[CiteRef::Feyerabend (1975a)|p. 17]]  [[Larry Laudan]], following Whewell and Herschell before him, clearly distinguishes the explicit prescriptions from the actual expectations scientists have.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 54]] According to Laudan, the rhetoric of scientists occasionally diverges from the realities of the empirical sciences.  Furthermore, Laudan argues that his reticulated model is able to account for scientific change due to its piecemeal approach.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 62]] According to this reticulated model, scientific changes can occur in theoretical level, methodological level and the axiological level with the latter being concerned with changes in the goal of the science.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 63]] When there is a dispute, scientists use the other classics levels for resolution.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 63]] Laudan believes that when scientists realize that their explicit requirements are in tension with the actual practices, scientists will change their explicit requirements.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 57]] He gives the example of the transition from the empirical-inductivist methodology to the hypothetico-deductive model.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)|p. 55-56]] Empirical-inductivist method was incompatible with the existence of unobservable entities. However, physicists in the 19th century has accepted the existence of numerous unobservable entities such as natural selection and gravitational force. As a result, the genrecommunity changed their explicit methodology. Therefore, Laudan believes that while differences between the implicit requirements and explicitly prescribed requirements are possible but given time, the latter will harmonize with the former.
|Related Topics=Methodology and Methods,
}}

Navigation menu