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Conclusive Theory Assessment (view source)
Revision as of 05:37, 10 November 2016
, 05:37, 10 November 2016no edit summary
{{Topic
|Question=Are there really instances of ''necessary '' theory acceptance or does every case of theory acceptance assessment involve some degree of ''inconclusiveness''?
|Topic Type=Descriptive
|Description=[[The Second Law|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 envisioned three possible distinct outcomes for theory assessment: accept, not accept, and inconclusive.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 199]] 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?
