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The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 20:59, 20 February 2017
, 20:59, 20 February 2017no edit summary
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)|p. 52-61]].
Both [[Rudolph Rudolfh 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 (1984)]]. 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.
