Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance Use and Pursuit

How ought a scientonomic theory deal with the various stances that a community might take towards a theory? How ought it to classify those stances? Which stances towards a theory ought a scientonomic theory account for?

There has been a long tradition of confusing different stances that a community can take towards a theory. Kuhn, for instance, used a number of equally vague words, including universally received,embraced, acknowledged, and committed, to describe the status of theories within scientific communities.1pp. 10-13 Acceptance too has had a plethora of different meanings. Once the taxonomy of epistemic stances is clarified, it is important to identify stances for which changes ought to be traced and explained by scientonomy.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is:

• Scientonomy ought to address the issue of how transitions from one accepted theory to another take place and what logic governs this evolution, and need not deal in questions of theory pursuit or use.

Broader History

In the historical literature, many different words have been used to describe the attitudes a scientific community can take towards a theory, generally without any attempt to clarify their respective meanings. 2p. 83 Larry Laudan and Stephen Wykstra were among the first who distinguished between the acceptance and the pursuit of a theory.3pp. 108-114 4p. 216 Hakob Barseghyan has argued that a similar distinction was implicit in the work of Imre Lakatos, although Lakatos did not explicitly draw the distinction.5p. 33

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	1 January 2016	That is when the community accepted its first answer to this question, the Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance (Barseghyan-2015), which indicates that the question is itself considered legitimate.	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance (Barseghyan-2015)	Scientonomy ought to address the issue of how transitions from one accepted theory to another take place and what logic governs this evolution, and need not deal in questions of theory pursuit or use.	2015

If an answer to this question is missing, please click here to add it.

Accepted Theories

The following theories have been accepted as answers to this question:

Community	Theory	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance (Barseghyan-2015)	1 January 2016

Suggested Modifications

According to our records, there have been no suggested modifications on this topic.

Current View

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance (Barseghyan-2015).

Scope of Scientonomy - Acceptance (Barseghyan-2015) states: "Scientonomy ought to address the issue of how transitions from one accepted theory to another take place and what logic governs this evolution, and need not deal in questions of theory pursuit or use."

Scientonomy currently recognizes several different stances that an epistemic community might take towards a theory. The community might accept the theory as the best currently available description of the world, it might regard a theory as worthy of pursuit and further development, or it might regard the theory as adequate for use for some practical purpose, while not the best description of the world. 5pp. 30-42 These stances, and their opposites (i.e. that a theory is unaccepted, neglected, or unused)together constitute the range of stances that a community might take towards a theory. The concept of a scientific mosaic consisting of the set of all theories accepted, and all methods employed by the community 5pp.1-11 is central to scientonomy, as is the goal of explaining all changes in this mosaic. To fulfill this central goal, a scientonomic theory ought to explain how transitions from one accepted theory to another take place, and what logic governs that transition, but it doesn't necessarily need to explain why some theories are pursued and others neglected and why some are used and others remain unused. 5p. 42

Related Topics

This question is a subquestion of Scope of Scientonomy.

This topic is also related to the following topic(s):

• Theory Use
• Theory Pursuit
• Ontology of Scientific Change
• Scope of Scientonomy - Explicit and Implicit
• Scope of Scientonomy - Construction and Appraisal
• Scope of Scientonomy - Descriptive and Normative
• Scope of Scientonomy - Individual and Social
• Scope of Scientonomy - Time Fields and Scale
• Epistemic Stances Towards Theories
• Theory Acceptance