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The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 21:00, 20 February 2017
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According to the law, in order to become accepted, a theory is assessed by the [[Method|method]] employed at the time by the [[Scientific Community|scientific community]] in question.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.129]] The key idea behind the second law is that theories are evaluated by the criteria employed by the community at the time of the evaluation. Thus, different communities employing different method of evaluation can end up producing different assessment outcomes.
Since it follows from the definition of [[Employed Method|''employed method'']] (a set of implicit rules actually employed in theory assessment), this formulation of the second law is viewed as a tautology. Thus, a theory may violate the [[Methodology|methodology]] to which a [[Scientific Community|scientific community]] explicitly subscribes, but not the actually employed method - a fact true by definition.
|Prehistory=In his 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962)]], [[Thomas Kuhn]] supposed that theories, methods, and values formed integrated units which he called paradigms. Kuhn's holism lead him to view scientific change as a kind of gestalt shift, seemingly involving a non-rational leap of faith. Critics charged him with attributing scientific change to "mob psychology". Later, he suggested that scientists are guided by epistemic values in making such choices. He supposed these values were fixed through history [[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977)]].
Past philosophers of science have generally failed to provide a definitive answer concerning the existence of a mechanism that governs transitions from one accepted theory to the next. In regard to theory acceptance, they have often failed to clearly distinguish between "[[Method|method]]" and "[[Methodology|methodology]]"[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|ppp. 52-61]].
Both [[Rudolfh Rudolf Carnap]] and [[Karl Popper]] realized the beginnings of a distinction between method and methodology by recognizing that it is the implicit method of a scientific community that is employed in theory assessment instead of its explicit prescriptions. [[Larry Laudan]] also tacitly acknowledged the distinction within his reticulated model by showing that the accepted rules of scientific practice (methodology) were at odds with the actual scientific practice of the time (method)[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984)]]. However, he then goes on to explicitly criticize a similar distinction accepted by Lakatos and Worrall.
There has also been a fierce debate among philosophers of science over the status of novel predictions. While, Popper, [[Imre Lakatos|Lakatos]] and Musgrave argued for a special status of novel predictions, Hempel, Carnap, and Laudan maintained that, as far as criteria for theory goes, there is no substantial difference between the value of novel predictions and post factual explanations of known facts. Nonetheless, some philosophers have used the lack of novel predictions in past historical episodes as a way to argue against the idea that theories are always accepted when they meet the criteria of the employed method. However this argument is unsound because it assumes that the hypothetico-deductive method was employed in every historical case.
