Modification:Sciento-2024-0002

Accept a list of necessary indicators of theory decay.

The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by Sanghoon Oh on 21 February 2024.1 The modification was accepted on 22 February 2024.

Preamble

This modification was one of the three introduced that superseded Oh’s original modification. To identify historical cases of theory decay, we need a list of historical indicators. It seems that to legitimately claim that a certain episode involved theory decay, we must be able to show that we are dealing with a continuous epistemic agent that existed throughout the transition in question, that there was a change from theory acceptance to unacceptance, and that the unacceptance took place without any assessment by that agent.

Modification

Accept the following as necessary indicators of theory decay (all three conditions must obtain):

• Agent Continuity: there should be historical evidence that the agent in question continuously existed during the time period under study.
• Change from Theory Acceptance to Unacceptance: there should be clear indications of a theory being accepted at some point and unaccepted at some later point.
• Theory Unacceptance Without Assessment: there should be clear evidence that the theory became unaccepted without any theoretical assessment on the part of the agent.

Verdict

The modification was accepted on 22 February 2024. During the workshop discussion, it was established that the community was prepared to accept indicators of a phenomenon's existence even if the existence of the phenomenon were yet to be accepted. Hence this modification did not presuppose the acceptance of either Sciento-2024-0001 or Sciento-2024-0003 (the other modifications which superseded Sciento-2021-0005). There was some concern about the individual conditions that comprise the suggested indicator of element decay. It was clarified during the discussion that the suggested indicator is to be understood as one indicator with three conditions that are only jointly sufficient; these are not individually sufficient: only when all three conditions are met can we speak of an instance of theory decay. Jamie Shaw highlighted that one of the conditions prompts a question as to what constitutes assessment for a given epistemic agent and that establishing whether there was a historical instance of assessment is a tricky task. It was also briefly discussed whether the methodological conditions of listed in this modification were also actually suggestive of a basic definition of element decay. It was not possible to change the modification to vote on or highlight this, since this would no longer reflect Oh’s original intentions, but was highlighted as an open question for the scientonomy community in the future. Then, the community voted to accept the modification by over a 2/3rds majority. 11 out of 15 voters supported accepting the modification.

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