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The First Law for Theories (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 16:39, 31 October 2023
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{{Theory Example
|Title=Anomaly-Tolerance
|Description=Specifically, in contemporary scientific communities, "we do not reject our accepted empirical theories even when these theories face anomalies (counterexamples, disconfirming instances, unexplained results of observations and experiments)."[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.122-3]] This is known as anomaly-tolerance and . Though it cannot be said to be a universal feature of science, it is by no means a new feature of science; in fact, as Barseghyan (2015) observes that "this anomaly-tolerance has been a feature of empirical science for a long time" and provides the following key examples of anomaly-tolerance , following Evans (1958, 1967, 1992), in the context of Newtonian theory.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123]]
<blockquote>The famous case of Newtonian theory and Mercury’s anomalous perihelion is a good indication that anomalies were not lethal for theories also in the 19th century empirical science. In 1859, it was observed that the behaviour of planet Mercury doesn’t quite fit the predictions of the then-accepted Newtonian theory of gravity. The rate of the advancement of Mercury’s perihelion (precession) wasn’t the one predicted by the Newtonian theory. For the Newtonian theory this was an anomaly. Several generations of scientists tried to find a solution to this problem. But, importantly, this anomaly didn’t falsify the Newtonian theory. The theory remained accepted for another sixty years until it was replaced by general relativity circa 1920.
This wasn’t the first time that the Newtonian theory faced anomalies. In 1750 it was believed that the Earth is an oblate-spheroid (i.e. that it is flattened at the poles). This was a prediction that followed from the then-accepted Newtonian theory, a prediction that had been confirmed by Maupertuis and his colleagues by 1740. However, soon very puzzling results came from the Cape of Good Hope: the measurements of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille were suggesting that, unlike the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere is prolate rather than oblate.[[CiteRef::Evans(1967); Evans(1992)]]Thus, the Earth was turning out to be pear-shaped! Obviously, the length of the degree of the meridian measured by Lacaille was an anomaly for the accepted oblate-spheroid view and, correspondingly, for the Newtonian theory. Of course, as with any anomaly, this one too forced the community to look for its explanation by rechecking the data, by remeasuring the arc, and by providing additional assumptions. Although it took another eighty years until the puzzle was solved, Lacaille’s anomalous results didn’t lead to the rejection of the then-accepted oblate-spheroid view. Finally, in 1834-38, Thomas Maclear repeated Lacaille’s measurements and established that the deviation of Lacaille’s results from the oblate-spheroid view were due to the gravitational attraction of Table Mountain.271 The treatment of Lacaille’s results – as something bothersome but not lethal – reveals the anomaly-tolerance of empirical science even in the 18th century.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Hybrid
}}
{{Theory Example
|Title=Anomaly-Tolerance: Earlier examples
|Description=Barseghyan (2015) provides further examples of anomaly-tolerance that precede Newtonian theory:
<blockquote>Take the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy accepted up until the late 17th century. Tycho’s Nova of 1572 and Kepler’s Nova of 1604 seemed to be suggesting that, contrary to the view implicit in the Aristotelian-medieval mosaic, there is, after all, generation and corruption in the celestial region. In addition, after Galileo’s observations of the lunar mountains in 1609, it appeared that celestial bodies are not perfectly spherical in contrast to the view of the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy. Moreover, observations of Jupiter’s moons (1609) and the phases of Venus (1611) appeared to be indicating that planets are much more similar to the Earth than to the Sun in that they too have the capacity for reflecting the sunlight. All these observational results were nothing but anomalies for the accepted theory which led to many attempts to reconcile new observational data with the accepted Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy. What is important is that the theory was not rejected; it remained accepted throughout Europe for another ninety years and was overthrown only by the end of the 17th century.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123-4]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Historical
}}
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