Changes

|Description=One species of normative propositions are [[Methodology|methodologies]], the rules of theory assessment openly prescribed by a scientific community. Methodologies are ''prescriptive'', as they describe how theory assessment within a scientific community ''ought'' to be performed. There are many historical cases where employed [[Method|scientific methods]] are known to conflict with professed methodologies. For example: eighteenth and nineteenth century scientists openly accepted a version of the ''empiricist inductivist methodology'', which required new theories to be deducible from phenomena and not posit any unobservable entities. However, these scientists still accepted theories that posited unobservable entities, such as phlogiston, electric fluid, or absolute space.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 52-53]] This seems to violate either [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)|the third law]] or [[The Zeroth Law (Harder-2015)|the zeroth law]] of scientific change. By the third law, employed methods are always deductive consequences of accepted theories. But, this seems impossible in cases where accepted methodologies and employed methods conflict. Under the zeroth law, all elements in the scientific mosaic are compatible with one another. But, that seems to be clearly not the case if methodologies and methods conflict with one another. How can this paradox be resolved?

|Prehistory=One species of normative propositions are [[Methodology|methodologies]], the rules of theory assessment openly prescribed by a scientific community. Methodologies are ''prescriptive'', as they describe how theory assessment within a scientific community ''ought'' to be performed. The history of science is filled with cases wherein there is a difference between openly prescribed methodologies and actually employed [[Method|methods]]. For example: eighteenth and nineteenth century scientists openly accepted a version of the ''empiricist inductivist methodology'', which required new theories to be deducible from phenomena and not posit any unobservable entities. However, these scientists still accepted theories that posited unobservable entities, such as phlogiston, electric fluid, or absolute space.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 52-53]]|History=At first, within Within the scientonomic communitycontext, it was at first unclear whether normative propositions could hold a place within a scientific mosaic—andmosaic and, therefore, within the scope of a theory of scientific changescientonomy. This uncertainty also applied to methodological dicta; it was proposed that a full-fledged theory of scientific change, together with history, could attempt to settle the issue.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 60]] At that time, however, the theory of scientific change did not include normative propositions until the production and acceptance of modifications suggested by Zoe Sebastien - modifications which included changing the definition of theory from, “a set of propositions that attempt to describe something” to “a set of propositions”. This new definition of theory could include normative propositions and, as a result, methodologies. However, regarding this new definition of ‘theory’ as encompassing methodologies, a paradox appears when this definition comes into contact with other components of the theory of scientific change.