Four Types of Theoretical Development in Empirical Sciences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48160/18532330me1.46Keywords:
crystallization, theory-evolution, embedding, incommensurability, theory-nets, echelon-sets, partial substructuresAbstract
This paper argues that four fundamental types of diachronic structures in science may be distinguished, and that these four types can be represented formally through a refined version of the apparatus of metatheoretical structuralism. These four types may be described as: crystallization, theory-evolution, embedding, and replacement with (partial) incommensurability. They are first explicated in intuitive, informal terms, and some historical examples (some of which have already been reconstructed in the structuralist literature) are suggested for each type. In the second part of the essay, the four types are formally characterized in structuralistic terms; the notions of a partial substructure as an echelon-set and of a diachronic theory-net thereby play a central role. The examples of the development of Clausius’s phenomenological thermodynamics as an instance of a crystallization process, and of Newtonian mechanics and Gibbsian thermodynamics as instances of theory-evolutions are laid out.
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