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Status of Disciplinary Boundaries (view source)
Revision as of 03:10, 1 March 2018
, 03:10, 1 March 2018no edit summary
|Formulated Year=2016
|Academic Events=Scientonomy Seminar 2016,
|Prehistory=Until very recently the question of the status of disciplinary boundaries was fundamentally mostly ignored questions. [[Static and Dynamic Methods|Static methodologists simply ]] showed very little interests interest in the subject. Perhaps the earliest comparison that can be drawn to a similar subject would have been although they did weigh in on the related question of the demarcation in dividing pseudo-of scientific theories from pseudo-scientific theoriesones. Through demarcation criteria, while not sufficiently establishing the status of disciplinary boundaries, philosophers Philosophers of science like [[Karl Popper]] and [[Rudolf Carnap]] were able to effectively establish formulated criteria for distinguishing scientific disciplines like astronomy and physics from non-scientific disciplinestopics like astrology and palm reading. Carnap’s demarcation criteria Carnap's verificationism maintained that a theory is commonly known as Verificationismscientific only if it can be verified by observation.[[CiteRef::Godfrey-Smith (2003)|pp. 27]] Heavily based Popper, on probabilitythe other hand, Carnap believed maintained that a theory could is only be scientific if it was testable. Carnap believed a theory should be tested on its occurrences and given a probability. Popper, very similarly, had criteria known as Falsificationism but whereas for Carnap a theory could be refuted multiple times, for Popper, once a theory was proved wrong it was permanently refutedis vulnerable to falsification by conflicting observations.[[CiteRef::Godfrey-Smith (2003)|pp. 58]]
Later, dynamic methodologists like [[Imre Lakatos]] and [[Thomas Kuhn]] had more of interest to say about disciplinary boundaries.
A more interesting comparison to be drawn between history and the status of disciplinary boundaries lies in the opinion of dynamic methodologists such as that of [[Imre Lakatos]] and [[Thomas Kuhn]]. Lakatos, while never outright stating his opinion on disciplinary boundaries seems to have formed a strong implicit foundation for disciplinary boundaries. For Lakatos, periods of stability in science involve research programs. What is interesting is that one of the main criteria for a theory to become accepted into a research program is to be in unity with the rest of the program.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)|pp. 32-34]] Herein it is evident, while there were no absolute criteria by which to determine disciplinary boundaries, Lakatos at least regarded them in some sort of simple terms in that they had to work with each other. In essence, for Lakatos disciplinary boundaries were still ambiguous but more defined than his static methodologist predecessors.
