Theories as modern myths: Giving up the pursuit of good theory to focus on good theorizing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Mills discusses the notion of myth and links it to a discussion of theory. While he does not consider myth and theory to be synonymous, I attempt to close the gap between these two notions even further. This argument is accomplished by discussing theorists that have theorized about theory and aligning their claims with Mills’ claims about myth. I propose that Mills cannot rely on coherence to substantiate good myth/theory and, instead, suggest the consideration of what constitutes good quality theorizing. Good theorizing involves deep understanding of different theories/myths and comparing them to generate innovation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.047 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.121 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.016 | 0.032 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.017 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".