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Since it follows from Barseghyan notes an important consequence of the law: <blockquote>So the question that the historian must ask here is: what were the expectations of the respective scientific communities that allowed for the definition acceptance of the respective natural philosophies? The second law suggests that, in order to reconstruct the actual method employed at a particular time, we must study the actual transitions in theories that took place at that time.[[Employed MethodCiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|''employed method''p. 130]] </blockquote> A further important consequence of the law has to do with the famous, long-standing debate on the status of novel predictions. Some authors (including Popper, Lakatos, and Musgrave) argue for a set special status of implicit rules actually employed in theory assessmentnovel predictions, where others (like Hempel, Carnap, and Laudan), this formulation of argue that novel predictions do not substantially differ from post factum explanations or "retro-dictions". But by the second law is viewed , as a tautology. ThusBarseghyan writes, a theory may violate "the whole debate in its current shape is ill-founded".[[MethodologyCiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|methodologyp. 131]] Whether novel predictions have a special status, in that "a new theory is expected to have confirmed novel predictions in order to which become accepted", is, by the ''second law'', dependent on a [[Scientific Community|scientific community]] explicitly subscribes, but not the actually 's employed method - a fact true by definitionat the time. Instead of being concerned with all theories in all contexts, we must ask whether theories in specific communities at specific time periods were required to have confirmed novel predictions.
The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 17:07, 27 January 2023
, 17:07, 27 January 2023no edit summary
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.
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=In his 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]], [[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 (1977a)]].
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{{Theory Example
|Title=Acceptance of General RelativityCartesian and Newtonian Theories|Description=The Another example is presented in [[Barseghyan (2015)|from ''The Laws of Scientific Change'']]: <blockquote>Even Suppose we study the most “revolutionary” theories must meet the actual requirements history of the time in order to become accepted. Einstein’s general relativity is considered as one of transition from the most groundAristotelian-breaking theories medieval natural philosophy to that of all time and, yet, it was evaluated Descartes in an orderly fashion France and became accepted only after it satisfied the requirements of the time. From that episode we can reconstruct what the actual requirements of the time wereNewton in Britain circa 1700. It is well known follows from ''the second law'' that both theories managed to satisfy the theory became accepted circa 1920, after the publication actual expectations of the results of Eddington’s famous observations of the Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 which confirmed one of the novel predictions of general relativity – namelyrespective scientific communities, the deflection of light in the spacetime curved due to the Sun’s mass. Thus, it is safe to say that the scientific community of the time expected (among other things) that a new theory must for otherwise they wouldn’t have confirmed novel predictionsbecome accepted.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 130]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Historical
}}
{{Theory Example
|Title=Acceptance of Cartesian and Newtonian TheoriesGeneral Relativity|Description=The example is presented in [[Barseghyan (2015)|''The Laws of Scientific Change'']]:<blockquote>Suppose we study Even the most “revolutionary” theories must meet the history actual requirements of the transition from time in order to become accepted. Einstein’s general relativity is considered as one of the Aristotelianmost ground-medieval natural philosophy to that breaking theories of Descartes all time and, yet, it was evaluated in France an orderly fashion and became accepted only after it satisfied the requirements of the time. From that episode we can reconstruct what the actual requirements of Newton in Britain circa 1700the time were. It follows from ''is well known that the theory became accepted circa 1920, after the publication of the results of Eddington’s famous observations of the Solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 which confirmed one of the novel predictions of general relativity – namely, the deflection of light in the spacetime curved due to the second law'' Sun’s mass. Thus, it is safe to say that both theories managed to satisfy the actual expectations scientific community of the respective scientific communities, for otherwise they wouldn’t time expected (among other things) that a new theory must have become acceptedconfirmed novel predictions.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 130]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Historical
}}
