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|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|Prehistory=The question as to whether the requirements theories should satisfy as well as the assessment criteria employed to evaluate theories are transhistorical (i.e. remain fixed over time) or, on the contrary, change on a par with theories has been addressed by several renowned philosophers of science. On the one hand, some of them subscribed to the thesis that scientific methods are static and immune to change. In this first category we find the logical positivists, as well as Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, the early Larry Laudan, John Worrall and Mario Bunge. This group of thinkers generally acknowledged the existence of an invariant core of fixed, abstract and general principles for theory appraisal; without those fixed standards epistemic relativism would be inescapable. On the other hand, some subscribed to the thesis that no methods are immune to change. In this second category we find others like Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and the later Larry Laudan. Methodology was also one of the subjects discussed in the correspondence between Lakatos and Feyerabend[[CiteRef::Motterlini (Ed.) (1999)]] who stood respectively for and against the existence of a fixed core of rules. Since the 60's and 70's it is generally acknowledged that those requirements and assessment criteria, at least to some extent, are not immune to change, and that theories, at least to some extent, can shape methods. Influential in this regard were Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, presented in his classic book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''[[CiteRef::Kuhn (19621962a)]] according to which in those revolutionary episodes not only theories but also methods - collectively called "paradigms" - change, this process is simultaneous or synchronous and Feyerabend's epistemic anarchism thesis, put forward in his book ''Against Method'',[[CiteRef::Feyerabend (1975a)]] according to which not only they do change and therefore there are no such fixed standards, but "anything goes". In their influential books, Kuhn and Lakatos provided support for the dynamic methods thesis, by supporting it with examples from the history of science.
Of particular importance for this discussion was the debate between John Worrall and Larry Laudan,[[CiteRef::Worrall (1988)]][[CiteRef::Laudan (1989a)]][[CiteRef::Worrall (1989)]] that took place in the late 80’s. The debate was initiated by Worrall’s review of Laudan’s book ''Science and Values'',[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)]] in which the latter presented his reticulated model of scientific change, in which the methodological, theoretical and axiological levels are intertwined. In the ensuing debate Worrall took the side of statism and Laudan that of dynamism. While both intended to offer a rational account of scientific change and to forestall the threat of epistemic relativism, the debate hinged on their respective conceptions of methodology, Laudan defending a broader one and Worrall a narrower one. A preliminary distinction between these conceptions of a narrower and broader methodology was provided by Worrall.[[CiteRef::Worrall (1988)]] Also, throughout the Worrall-Laudan debate no sharp distinction is provided between the procedural or formal and substantive methods, but at the end of it both contenders agree that the latter ones, those shaped by our accepted ontology and theories, do change over time and are shaped by those pressupositions, even if the question as to whether there are purely procedural methods is left unanswered.
