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|Topic Type=Descriptive

|Description=[[The Second Law (Barseghyan-2015)|The second law]] specifies that, in order to become accepted, a theory is assessed by the method employed at the time [[Citeref::Barseghyan(2015|pp. 129-132]]. Barseghyan [[Citeref::Barseghyan(2015|p. 199)]] envisioned three possible distinct outcomes for theory assessment: accept, not accept, and inconclusive. Are there really cases where acceptance of a theory is necessary, or is there always some degree of inconclusiveness? If there are necessary cases, is it possible for us as historians to show decisively that a theory was necessarily accepted rather than accepted after an assessment that involved some degree of inconclusiveness. We can ask the same question with regard to mosaic splits: are [[Necessary Mosaic Split theorem (Barseghyan-2015)|necessary splits]] theoretically possible, or are all mosaic splits the result of inconclusive assessment? And if they are possible, can we ever as historians detect them?

|Formulated Year=2016

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