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The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 19:05, 20 January 2023
, 19:05, 20 January 2023no edit summary
{{Theory
|Topic=Mechanism of Theory Acceptance
|Theory Type=Descriptive
|Subject=
|Predicate=
|Title=The Second Law
|Theory TypeAlternate Titles=the law of theory acceptance|Title Formula=|Text Formula=Descriptive
|Formulation Text=In order to become accepted into the mosaic, a theory is assessed by the method actually employed at the time.
|Formulation FileObject=The Second Law Barseghyan 2015.png|Topic=Mechanism of Theory Acceptance
|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|Formulation File=The Second Law Barseghyan 2015.png|Description=According to Barseghyan's original formulation of the second law, "theories become accepted only when they satisfy the requirements of the methods actually employed at the time. In other words there is only one way for a theory to become accepted – it must meet the implicit expectations of the scientific community".[[CiteRef:: Barseghyan (2015)|p. 129]] According to the law, in order to become accepted, a theory is assessed by the [[Method|method]] employed at the time by the [[Scientific Community|scientific community]] in question.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 129]] The key idea behind the second law is that theories are evaluated by the criteria employed by the community at the time of the evaluation. Thus, different communities employing different method of evaluation can end up producing different assessment outcomes.
Since it follows from the definition of [[Employed Method|''employed method'']] (a set of implicit rules actually employed in theory assessment), this formulation of the second law is viewed as a tautology. Thus, a theory may violate the [[Methodology|methodology]] to which a [[Scientific Community|scientific community]] explicitly subscribes, but not the actually employed method - a fact true by definition.
