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Scope of Scientonomy - Descriptive (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 21:46, 19 February 2023
, 21:46, 19 February 2023no edit summary
|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]]
As the "science of science" [[scientonomy]] seeks a purely descriptive account of processes of change in the [[Scientific Mosaic|scientific mosaic]] and therefore encompasses only historical and theoretical questions. Keeping descriptive scientific questions distinct from questions of normative methodology avoids numerous pitfalls. For example, those who conflate the two sometimes argue that because some method is known to have flaws of logical consistency or soundness, it cannot possibly have been the one that was, in fact, used by scientists. However, there is a great deal historical evidence that scientists actually have used logically flawed methods. Inductive reasoning is a ubiquitous part of science, despite its well known flaws.[[CiteRef::Vickers (2014)]][[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 19-20]] The intrusion of normative concerns could also undermine scientonomy's aspirations to scientific status. If any laws of scientific change discovered were accorded normative force they would become tautological truths incapable being called into question by empirical inquiry.
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=Discussions of scientific change have traditionally conflated normative and descriptive concerns. In the nineteenth century, [[William Whewell]] wrote that "The Philosophy of Science...[is an] insight into the essence and conditions of all real knowledge, and an exposition of the best methods for the discovery of new truths". [[CiteRef::Whewell (1840)|p.1]] Regarding the question of whether his theory should be taken as a descriptive or prescriptive account of scientific change, [[Thomas Kuhn]] wrote that it "should be read in both ways at once". [[CiteRef:: Kuhn (1970a)]] Belief in an unchanging true method of science contributed to this conflation, since the problem of identifying this method was seen as both a descriptive and a normative question. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 14-16]]
