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The First Law for Theories (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 16:45, 31 October 2023
, 16:45, 31 October 2023no edit summary
|Description=According to this formulation of the first law for theories, an accepted [[theory]] remains accepted unless replaced by other theories, even though sometimes that replacement may simply be the negation of the theory. That is, "if for some reason scientists of a particular field stop pursuing new theories, the last accepted theory will safely continue to maintain its position in the mosaic," with no further confirmation of the theory required.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.122]]. There is no specification of what sort of theory might replace an accepted theory. Barseghyan notes that, in the most minimal case, a theory may simply be replaced by its own negation.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.122]]
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=The abundance of exempla below of instances of anomaly-tolerance is arguably the main reason for the rejection of Popper's ""falsificationist"" view on the part of Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.124]] Specifically, ""falsificationism"" is "the view that the whole course of science is nothing but a series of conjectures and their refutations" (Barseghyan (2015)'s summary). Since the mere presence of anomalies does not necessarily lead to the acceptance of a proposition's negation, it seems clear that "counterexamples do not kill theories."[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.124]] (See [[Kuhn (1960)]], [[Kuhn (1970)]]).
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