Changes

Jump to navigation Jump to search
no edit summary
{{Theory
|Topic=Mechanism of Method Employment
|Theory Type=Descriptive
|Subject=
|Predicate=
|Title=The Third Law
|Theory Type=Descriptive
|Alternate Titles=the law of method employment
|Title Formula=
|Text Formula=
|Formulation Text=A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from some subset of other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.
|Object=
|Authors List=Zoe Sebastien
|Formulated Year=2016
|Formulation File=The Third Law Sebastien 2016.png
|Topic=Mechanism of Method Employment
|Authors List=Zoe Sebastien,
|Formulated Year=2016
|Description=The [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)|initial formulation]] of the law, proposed by Barseghyan in [[Barseghyan (2015)|''The Laws of Scientific Change'']], stated that a [[Method|method]] becomes [[Employed Method|employed]] only when it is deducible from other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.132]] In that formulation, it wasn't clear whether employed methods follow from ''all'' or only ''some'' of the accepted theories and employed methods of the time. This led to a logical paradox which this reformulation attempts to solve.[[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]]
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]]
{{#evt:service=youtube|id=BBBxJ8yYrsg|urlargs=start=253|alignment=right|description=The third law explained by Hakob Barseghyan|container=frame }} In Barseghyan’s explication of the Aristotelian-Medieval method, he illustrates how Aristotelian natural philosophy impacted the method of the time. Most notable One of the key features of the Aristotelian-scholastic method was the requirement of intuition schooled by experience, i.e. that a proposition is acceptable if it grasps the acceptance nature of teleology – a theory which states thing though intuition schooled by experience. The requirement itself was a deductive consequence of several assumptions accepted at the time. One of the assumptions underlying this requirement was the idea that every natural thing has a nature , a substantial quality that makes a thing what it seeks to fulfill is (e.g. an acorn’s a human's nature is to become an oak treetheir capacity of reason). It stood to reason Another assumption underlying the requirement was the idea that the nature of a thing can only be grasped intuitively grasped by an those who are most experienced personwith the things of that type. This fundamental belief generated a method which specifies these The requirements known as of the Aristotelianintuitive truth followed from these assumptions. The scholastic-Medieval method, and is Aristotelians scholars wouldn’t require intuitive truths grasped by an illustration of how employed methods are deductive consequences of the accepted theories of the timeexperienced person if they didn’t believe that things have natures that could be grasped intuitively by experts.
The third law has also proven useful in explicating such requirements as Confirmed Novel Predictions (CNP). According to the hypothetico-deductive method, a theory which challenges our accepted ontology must provide CNP in order to become accepted. However, the history of CNP has been a point of confusion for some time. By the Third Law, one can show that the requirement of CNP has not always been expected of new theories. When Newton published his Principia, CNP were not a requirement of his professed method, yet they were still provided. On the other hand, Clark’s law of diminishing returns had no such predictions. This is because Newton’s proposal of unobservable entities, such as gravity and absolute space, challenged the accepted ontology of the time, while Clark’s simply accounted for the data already available. Thus, in utilizing the Third Law, one can discover both when certain criteria become an implicit rule and under what conditions they are necessary.
|Prehistory=The core idea of ''the third law'' can be traced back to [[Thomas Kuhn]], [[Paul Feyerabend]], [[Dudley Shapere]], [[Larry Laudan]], and [[Ernan McMullin]], who suggested that our beliefs about the world shape how we engage with the world.
In his ''Science and Values'', [[Larry Laudan]] has showed how the discovery of placebo effect and experimenter's bias led to changes in drug trial methods.[[CiteRef::Laudan (19841984a)|pp. 38-39]] However, while Laudan’s account hints at aspects of ''the third law'', it ultimately conflates [[Method|methods]] and [[Methodology|methodologies]].[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 130-131]]
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]]
The idea that our theories about the world shape our methods can also be traced back to [[Thomas Kuhn]] who argued for the synchronous change of theories and methods during paradigm shifts.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (19621962a)|p. 109]]
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]].
|Page Status=Needs Editing
|Editor Notes=
}}
{{YouTube Video
|VideoID=BBBxJ8yYrsg
|VideoStartAt=253
|VideoDescription=The initial third law explained by Hakob Barseghyan
|VideoEmbedSection=Description
}}
{{YouTube Video
|VideoID=mWciydFqP_E
|VideoStartAt=554
|VideoDescription=Sebastien's third law explained by Gregory Rupik
|VideoEmbedSection=Description
}}
{{Acceptance Record
|Acceptance Indicators=The law became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective [[Modification:Sciento-2016-0001|suggested modification]].
|Still Accepted=Yes
|Accepted Until Era=
|Accepted Until Year=
|Accepted Until Month=
|Accepted Until Day=
|Accepted Until Approximate=No
|Rejection Indicators=
}}

Navigation menu