Compatibility

What is compatibility? How should it be defined?

The notion of compatibility plays a central role in scientonomy. As such, providing it with a proper definition is a matter of considerable importance.

In the scientonomic context, this term was first used by Patrick Fraser and Ameer Sarwar in 2018. The term is currently accepted by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is:

• The ability of two elements to coexist in the same mosaic.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	28 December 2018	The question became accepted with the publication of the paper by Fraser & Sarwar.	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Compatibility (Fraser-Sarwar-2018)	The ability of two elements to coexist in the same mosaic.	2018

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Accepted Theories

The following theories have been accepted as answers to this question:

Community	Theory	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Compatibility (Fraser-Sarwar-2018)	3 June 2020

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2018-0015	Scientonomy	28 December 2018	Accept the definition of compatibility, as the ability of two elements to coexist in the same mosaic. Also replace the zeroth law with the compatibility corollary.	Accepted	While the modification induced a few comments on the encyclopedia, it became accepted as a result of discussions that took place mostly offline. It was agreed that the modification "comes to remedy one of the glaring omissions" in the current zeroth which doesn't "say much above and beyond what is already implicit in the notion of compatibility"c1 as it "is lacking in empirical content, and should be replaced with a definition of compatibility".c2 It was also noted that the proposed "definition of compatibility criteria... captures the gist of the concept as it has been used in our community".c3 It was also agreed that "the compatibility corollary follows from this definition".c4 c5 Finally, the community accepted that the definition and the corollary "recover the content of the Zeroth Law".c6	3 June 2020

Current View

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is Compatibility (Fraser-Sarwar-2018).

Compatibility (Fraser-Sarwar-2018) states: "The ability of two elements to coexist in the same mosaic."

This definition of compatibility captures the main gist of the notion as it was originally intended by Harder and Barseghyan - the idea that two elements are compatible when they can coexist within the same mosaic.