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The evolution of the drug trial methods is an example of the third law in action. For example, the discovery of the placebo effect in drug testing demonstrates that fake treatment can cause improvement in patient symptoms. As a result of its discovery the abstract requirement of “when assessing a drug’s efficacy, the possible placebo effect must be taken into account” was generated. This abstract requirement is, by definition, an accepted theory which stipulates that, if ignored, substantial doubt would be cast on any trial. As a result of this new theory, the Single-Blind Trial method was devised. The currently employed method in drug testing is the Double-Blind Trial, a method which specifies all of the abstract requirements of its predecessors. It is an apt illustration of how new methods are generated through the acceptance of new theories, as well as how new methods employ the abstract requirements of their predecessors.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 132-152]]

In Barseghyan’s explication of the Aristotelian-Medieval method, he illustrates how Aristotelian natural philosophy impacted the method of the time. Most notable is the acceptance of teleology – a theory which states that every thing has a nature it seeks to fulfill (e.g. an acorn’s nature is to become an oak tree). It stood to reason that the nature of a thing can only be intuitively grasped by an experienced person. This fundamental belief generated a method which specifies these requirements known as the Aristotelian-Medieval method, and is an illustration of how employed methods are deductive consequences of the accepted theories of the time.

Another precursor of ''the third law'' is suggested by Ernan McMullin, who showed how the hypothetico-deductive method came to replace the Aristotelian Medieval method in the 18th century. According to McMullin, the employment of the hypothetico-deductivism was a result of accepting that the world is more complex than it appears in our observations.[[CiteRef::McMullin (1988)|pp. 32-34]]

While these accounts suggest that our accepted theories somehow impact our implicit requirements for investigating the world, they don't specify how exactly this shaping takes place. That is the gap that the third law attempts to fill.

|History=The law replaced Barseghyan's [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)|original formulation of the Third Law]]. Sebastien's third law was the first to be accepted by [[Community:Scientonomy|Scientonomy community]] via the scientonomic mechanism of [[Modification:Sciento-2016-0001|modifications]].

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