22
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Theory Pursuit (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 10:10, 4 December 2018
, 10:10, 4 December 2018no edit summary
Hume did not make the distinction explicit and obvious; hence it is reasonable to trace the first explicit distinction back to [[Imre Lakatos]], as he stated in his scientific method regarding how to evaluate pursued theories.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)]] In his ''Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes'', he came up with criteria that determine which competing theory is better. This is a clear indication that Lakatos distinguished accepted theories and pursued theories, because it is impossible for theories to be competitive if all theories are equally accepted. Moreover, Lakatos made the concept of pursuing theories even clearer by describing the progress of scientific knowledge as pursuing new facts to fit “phantasies” that scientists came up beforehand [[CiteRef::Lakatos (1978a)|pp. 8-101]]. Understanding Lakatos’ theory is a good starting point to understand Barseghyan’s theory in terms of theory pursuit not only because Lakatos was arguably the first person who explicitly distinguished accepting and pursuing. Lakatos does not believe that scientists need to be restricted when they decide which theory is worth pursuing; the idea is closely related to Barseghyan’s idea that pursued theories do not need to have any use values at the moment.
The distinction between pursuing and accepting is also explicitly made by [[Larry Laudan]] in his ''Progress and its Problems'', as he states that there are two contexts of theories and research traditions, which are the context of acceptance and the context of pursuit.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1977)|pp. 108-114]] When discussing pursuing theories, Laudan brought up the idea of “competing theories”, which suggests that Laudan does not see theories as final truths of the world; it is hence reasonable to modify theories without accepting them.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1977)|pp. 108-114]] The believe of pursuing but not accepting is linked to Barseghyan’s idea of explicitly and clearly distinguish pursuing a theory and accepting a theory.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 33]]
Stephen Wykstra also noticed the distinction as presented in his article ''Toward a Historical Meta-Method for Assessing Normative Methodologies: Rationability, Serendipity, and the Robinson Crusoe Fallacy'', where he made a clear distinction between accepted theories and pursed theories (Wylstra, 216).[[CiteRef::Wylstra Wykstra (1980)|p. 216]] In his work, pursuing theories is closely related to the notion of testing scientific hypothesis.[[CiteRef::Wylstra Wykstra (1980)|p. 218]]
}}
{{YouTube Video
|VideoID=MZ2AjYYHfrw&t
|VideoStartAt=125
|VideoDescription=Hakob Barseghyan’s lecture on pursued theories
