The First Law for Methods (Barseghyan-2015)

This is an answer to the question Mechanism of Scientific Inertia for Methods that states "An employed method remains employed unless replaced by other methods."

The First Law for Methods was formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015.1

Broader History

This idea is not new to philosophers of science. For example, it is expressed in Kuhn (1970a): "scientists behave in the following ways; those modes of behaviour have… the following essential functions; in the absence of an alternative mode that would serve similar functions, scientists should behave essentially as they do if their concern is to improve scientific knowledge."2p. 237 This is similar to our formulation of The First Law for Methods (Barseghyan-2015), disregarding the normative piece ("scientists should behave").

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this theory:

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	1 January 2016	The law became de facto accepted by the community at that time together with the whole theory of scientific change.	No	22 February 2024	The law was rejected as a result of the acceptance of modification Sciento-2023-0002. It was replaced by The First Law for Norms (Barseghyan-Pandey-2023).

Suggestions To Reject

These are all the modifications where the rejection of this theory has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Date Assessed	Verdict	Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2023-0002	Scientonomy	28 December 2023	Accept new formulations of the first law for theories, norms, and questions that are in tune with the formulation of the first law. Also accept new formulations of the respective rejection theorems - theory rejection, norm rejection, and question rejection.	22 January 2024	Accepted	During the 2024 workshop, the bulk of the discussion centered around the inclusion of the first law for norms and norm rejection theorem in the set of formulations to be accepted. Paul Patton contended that norm employment in general had not been demonstrated to be lawful beyond method employment, and our basic formulations should instead concern norm acceptance, which is patently lawful. He argued that the formulations should be modified to pertain either to methods only or to norm acceptance. It was decided that if the community were to remain uncomfortable with accepting Pandey’s new formulations, a revote would likely also need to be taken on Rawleigh’s Sciento-2022-0002, given that the issue of norm employment was also highlighted in discussions of that modification. After extensive discussion, Barseghyan suggested that the first law for norms would only apply to situations where behavior was norm-guided to begin with, which would skirt the difficulty that faces even behavioural psychologists of determining whether human behaviour in general is lawful. The majority of the community was comfortable with this workaround, and the modification was ultimately accepted with over 2/3rds majority assenting, with 11/14 votes to accept (although 1 voter voted to reject the modification and 2 voted to keep it open).

Question Answered

The First Law for Methods (Barseghyan-2015) is an attempt to answer the following question: What makes the methods of an agent's mosaic continue to remain in the mosaic?

See Mechanism of Scientific Inertia for Methods for more details.

Description

Formulated for methods, the first law states that the implicit expectations employed in theory assessment will continue to be employed until they are replaced by some alternate expectations.

Just as is the case for the first law for theories, this law does not impose limitations on the sort of methods that can replace employed methods.1p. 125 However, as Barseghyan notes:

the community never remains with no expectations whatsoever. When facing a new theory, the community always has some implicit expectations concerning such theories. These expectations may be very specific or they may be very abstract and vague, but some expectations are always present, for otherwise no theory assessment would be possible.1p. 126

The gist of this theory can be illustrated by the following examples.

Possibilities for Method Replacement

Here are some possibilities for how method replacement by the first law might occur, as formulated by Barseghyan (2015):

In the most basic case, a community can reject some of the more specific requirements of its currently employed method and revert to a more abstract method. Alternatively, it can replace those rejected requirements with some new specific requirements. Suppose the employed method stipulates that a new theory must be tested in repeatable experiments and observations. In principle, the community may one day remove some of the ingredients of this method, say, the requirement of repeatability. As a result, the community can either revert to a more abstract method or it can introduce a new requirement to replace the repeatability clause. For instance, the community may revert to the more abstract method which stipulates a new theory must be tested in experiments and observations (no repeatability requirement). Alternatively, it can introduce a new requirement that in addition to empirical testing a new theory must also explain all the facts explained by the accepted theory. Which of these two scenarios materialize at each particular instance is decided by a number of contingent factors.1p. 125

Reasons

No reasons are indicated for this theory.

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Questions About This Theory

The following higher-order questions concerning this theory have been suggested:

• Tautological Status of The First Law for Methods (Barseghyan-2015)

If a question about this theory is missing, please add it here.