Perhaps we need to consider theories in relation to the communities that affiliate around them. Academic fields are highly structured and metastable...until they aren’t.
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[1] To be clear, this sociological approach says nothing about the validity of a theory that communities "affiliate around", as demonstrated by the community that is bound together by the theory that the Earth is flat, or by the theory that Earth was created on October 22, 4004 BC. But such a sociological approach is nevertheless valuable, to the extent that it enables the comparison of what counts as evidence across different communities.
[2] This confuses field with community. Field is the ideational dimension of the culture as semiotic system, which includes theories, which is distinct from the social structure of a community.
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