Changes

|Title=Scope of Scientonomy - Descriptive

|Theory Type=Normative

|Formulation Text=Scientonomy is a descriptive discipline whose main task is to explain the process of changes in the scientific mosaic. It is distinct from normative methodology, whose task is to evaluate and prescribe methods. The findings of scientonomy may be used in such normative evaluations, but scientonomy itself should not be expected to perform any normative functions.

|Topic=Scope of Scientonomy - Descriptive and Normative

|Formulated Year=2015

|Description=There are at least three sorts of questions that we might ask about the process of [[Scientific Change|scientific change]]; Historical questions having to do with what theories and methods were accepted by a particular community at a particular point in time, theoretical questions about the mechanisms of scientific change, and methodological questions about how scientific change ought to happen and what theories and methods ought to be accepted. The first two questions are descriptive in nature, and the third is normative. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 12-13]]

By the 1980's most authors agreed that the methods of science had changed over time, and that a theory of scientific change needed to account for both theory change and method change.[[CiteRef::Shapere (1980)]][[CiteRef::Laudan (1984a)]][[CiteRef::McMullin (1988)]] This recognition made it clear that the question of a descriptive account of science's changing methods is a different one from the question of what method science should use. Barseghyan argued that, as a science, scientonomy can deal only with descriptive questions concerning the history and theory of scientific change, leaving normative methodology as a separate field of inquiry. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015) |pp. 18-21]]

|Page Status=Editor Approved

}}

{{Acceptance Record

|Acceptance Indicators=The theory was introduced by Barseghyan in ''The Laws of Scientific Change'' [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)| pp. 12-20]] and became ''de facto'' accepted by the community at that time together with the whole [[The Theory of Scientific Change|theory of scientific change]].

|Still Accepted=Yes

|Accepted Until Approximate=No

}}