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Static Procedural Methods theorem (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 21:02, 1 April 2018
, 21:02, 1 April 2018no edit summary
Can a procedural method be replaced by a substantive method? No, because substantive methods, by definition, presuppose at least some contingent proposition while procedural methods only necessary ones, which are compatible with any truth, whether contingent or necessary, already accepted into the mosaic. Therefore, no substantive method can be incompatible with or replace any procedural method. For example: if the deductive acceptance method, whereby a propositon follows deductively from other accepted propositions, were not to be accepted, this would imply a violation of the very definition of deductive inference, according to which truth is transmitted from the premises to the conclusion.
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=Philosophers of science up until [[Karl Popper]] and [[Imre Lakatos]] typically believed that there was at least one element of the scientific mosaic immune to change. For most, this static element was believed to be a transhistorical scientific method. Philosophers have not always agreed what this static [[Method#Prehistory|method]] should be, but almost all until the second half of the twentieth century believed that the scientific method should be an unchanging element in a scientific mosaic.[[CiteRef::Hoyningen-Huene (2008)]]
[[Aristotle]] and his successors assumed a method by which axiomatic proof could guarantee absolute certainty about the world. [[Rudolf Carnap]] and the logical positivists attempted to axiomatize scientific theories, and therefore apply a universal method of logical deduction in their form of inductive verificationism. Contra the positivist approach, but still assuming a universal and static characteristic of method, Popper introduced a falsificationist method of science.[[CiteRef::Andersen and Hepburn (2015)]] This method rejected ever achieving absolute certainty in the truth of a theory, but Popper and contemporaries nonetheless assumed that this falsificationist method ought to have, and in fact had, applied to all scientific communities across time and space. The particular differences between each method are elaborated on the page on [[Method]], but it is due to the assumption that their own explicated procedure of theory acceptance applies to all scientific communities that these philosophers can be characterized as subscribing to a Static Methods theorem.
More recently, the debate between Laudan and Worrall[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)]][[CiteRef::Worrall (1988)]][[CiteRef::Laudan (1989a)]][[CiteRef::Worrall (1989)]] elucidated the distinction between two questions about static methods. First, an empirical question: have there been any methods which have not changed through history? And second, a theoretical question: Are there any methods which are, in principle, immune to change? Both Worrall and Laudan agreed that there exist [[Substantive Method|substantive methods]] shaped by contingent proposition and therefore not static. However, Laudan held that no methods have ever been [[Procedural Method|procedural]] — shaped by only necessary propositions and therefore immune to change — whereas Worrall contents that certain methods, such as the hypothetico-deductive method, are in fact procedural and historically have formed the base of scientific reasoning.
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