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The First Law for Theories (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 16:52, 31 October 2023
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|Prehistory=The abundance of exempla below of instances of anomaly-tolerance is arguably the main reason for the rejection of Popper's ""falsificationist"" view on the part of Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.124]] Specifically, ""falsificationism"" is "the view that the whole course of science is nothing but a series of conjectures and their refutations" (Barseghyan (2015)'s summary). Since the mere presence of anomalies does not necessarily lead to the acceptance of a proposition's negation, it seems clear that "counterexamples do not kill theories."[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.124]]
(See [[Kuhn (19601962)]], [[Kuhn (1970)]], [[Lakatos (1971)]], [[Laudan (1977)]]).
|History=
|Page Status=Stub
{{Theory Example
|Title=Anomaly-Tolerance
|Description=Specifically, in contemporary scientific communities''empirical'' science, "we do not reject our accepted empirical theories even when these theories face anomalies (counterexamples, disconfirming instances, unexplained results of observations and experiments)."[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.122-3]] This is known as anomaly-tolerance. Though it cannot be said to be a universal feature of science, it is by no means a new feature, as Barseghyan (2015) observes that "this anomaly-tolerance has been a feature of empirical science for a long time" and provides the following key examples of anomaly-tolerance, following Evans (1958, 1967, 1992), in the context of Newtonian theory.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123]]
<blockquote>The famous case of Newtonian theory and Mercury’s anomalous perihelion is a good indication that anomalies were not lethal for theories also in the 19th century empirical science. In 1859, it was observed that the behaviour of planet Mercury doesn’t quite fit the predictions of the then-accepted Newtonian theory of gravity. The rate of the advancement of Mercury’s perihelion (precession) wasn’t the one predicted by the Newtonian theory. For the Newtonian theory this was an anomaly. Several generations of scientists tried to find a solution to this problem. But, importantly, this anomaly didn’t falsify the Newtonian theory. The theory remained accepted for another sixty years until it was replaced by general relativity circa 1920.
<blockquote>Take the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy accepted up until the late 17th century. Tycho’s Nova of 1572 and Kepler’s Nova of 1604 seemed to be suggesting that, contrary to the view implicit in the Aristotelian-medieval mosaic, there is, after all, generation and corruption in the celestial region. In addition, after Galileo’s observations of the lunar mountains in 1609, it appeared that celestial bodies are not perfectly spherical in contrast to the view of the Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy. Moreover, observations of Jupiter’s moons (1609) and the phases of Venus (1611) appeared to be indicating that planets are much more similar to the Earth than to the Sun in that they too have the capacity for reflecting the sunlight. All these observational results were nothing but anomalies for the accepted theory which led to many attempts to reconcile new observational data with the accepted Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy. What is important is that the theory was not rejected; it remained accepted throughout Europe for another ninety years and was overthrown only by the end of the 17th century.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123-4]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Historical
}}
{{Theory Example
|Title=Anomaly-Tolerance is not necessarily universal
|Description=Barseghyan (2015) contends that "the attitude of the community towards anomalies is historically changeable and non-uniform across different fields of science."[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.124]] Both anomaly-intolerant and anomaly-tolerant attitudes can prevail in different communities.
Firstly, consider the ""historical"" example put forth by Barseghyan (2015):
<blockquote>Consider the famous four color theorem currently accepted in mathematics which states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Suppose for the sake of argument that a map were found such that required no less than five colors to color. Question: how would mathematicians react to this anomaly? Yes, they would check, double-check, and triple-check the anomaly, but once it were established that the anomaly is genuine and it is not a hoax, the proof of the four color theorem would be revoked and the theorem itself would be rejected. Importantly it could be rejected without being replaced by any other general proposition. Its only replacement in the mosaic would be the singular proposition stating the anomaly itself. This anomaly-intolerance is a feature of our contemporary formal science.278 Thus, we have to accept that anomaly-tolerance is not a universal feature of science.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.125]]</blockquote>
Additionally, Barseghyan (2015) extends this example into a brief ''theoretical'' discussion. That is:
<blockquote>The first law for theories doesn’t impose any limitations as to what sort of propositions can in principle replace the accepted propositions; it merely says that there is always some replacement. This replacement can be as simple as a straightforward negation of the accepted proposition, or a full-fledged general theory, or a singular proposition describing some anomaly. The actual attitude of the community may be different at different time periods and in different fields of science.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.125]]</blockquote>
|Example Type=Hybrid
}}
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