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|Theory TypeAlternate Titles=the law of theory acceptance|Title Formula=|Text Formula=Descriptive|Formulation Text=In order to become accepted into the mosaic, a theory is assessed by the method actually employed at the time.|Formulation File=The Second Law Barseghyan 2015.png|TopicObject=Mechanism of Theory Acceptance

|Formulation File=The Second Law Barseghyan 2015.png|Description=According to Barseghyan's original formulation of the second law, "theories become accepted only when they satisfy the requirements of the methods actually employed at the time. In other words there is only one way for a theory to become accepted – it must meet the implicit expectations of the scientific community".[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 129]] 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. 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 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.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 130]]</blockquote>

TODOA 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 special status of novel predictions, where others (like Hempel, Carnap, and Laudan) argue that novel predictions do not substantially differ from post factum explanations or "retro-dictions". But by the second law, as Barseghyan writes, "the whole debate in its current shape is ill-founded".[[CiteRef: Continue:Barseghyan (2015)|p. 131]] Whether novel predictions have a special status, in that "a new theory is expected to have confirmed novel predictions in order to become accepted", is, by the ''second law'', dependent on a community's employed method at 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.

|Prehistory=TODOIn his 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions'[[CiteRef: Prehistory here: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)]]. 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)|pp. 52-61]].  Both [[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 (1984a)]]. 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.|History=This was the original formulation of the second law proposed by Barseghyan in [[Barseghyan (2015)|''The Laws of Scientific Change'']]. [[Scientonomy Seminar|Seminar]] discussions revealed the law's two major flaws. First, it didn't clearly indicate what happened to a theory when a certain [[Theory Assessment Outcomes|assessment outcome]] obtained. Specifically, it didn't link theory assessment outcomes to the theory's acceptance or unacceptance. Secondly, the law sounded like a tautology which is not what a good law should sound like. Consequently, in 2017, a new formulation of the law was suggested by Patton, Overgaard and Barseghyan, which became accepted towards the end of that year and, thus, replaced the initial formulation.[[CiteRef::Patton, Overgaard, and Barseghyan (2017)]]|Page Status=Needs Editing|Editor Notes=The prehistory section is too broad. It gives a general prehistory of the TOPIC, rather than a prehistory of the THEORY. This section should credit only those philosophers who understood that theories are being evaluated by the method OF THE TIME.}}{{YouTube Video|VideoID=BBBxJ8yYrsg|VideoStartAt=2034|VideoDescription=The second law explained by Hakob Barseghyan|VideoEmbedSection=Description}}{{Theory Example|Title=Acceptance of Cartesian and Newtonian Theories|Description=Another example from ''The Laws of Scientific Change'':<blockquote>Suppose we study the history of the transition from the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy to that of Descartes in France and that of Newton in Britain circa 1700. It follows from ''the second law'' that both theories managed to satisfy the actual expectations of the respective scientific communities, for otherwise they wouldn’t have become accepted.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 130]]</blockquote>|Example Type=Historical}}{{Theory Example|Title=Acceptance of General Relativity|Description=The example is presented in [[Barseghyan (2015)|''The Laws of Scientific Change'']]:<blockquote>Even the most “revolutionary” theories must meet the actual requirements of the time in order to become accepted. Einstein’s general relativity is considered as one of the most ground-breaking theories of all time and, yet, it was evaluated in 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 the time were. It 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 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 have confirmed novel predictions.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 130]]</blockquote>|Example Type=Historical

|Accepted From Approximate=YesNo

|Still Accepted=YesNo|Accepted Until Era=CE|Accepted Until Year=2017|Accepted Until Month=November|Accepted Until Day=29