Canonical concepts are "…those concepts that have wide currency within the relevant community…the versions of concepts that a particular academic community…currently holds" (Taber, 2019). The ideas of canonical concepts may be considered a 'useful fiction' as "there are no canonical concepts as such–rather, usually there is widespread agreement, among most [scientists] who would claim to know about a topic area, about the general nature of the key ideas. That is usually good enough for most purposes, whilst leaving enough intellectual space for genuine disagreements between different [scientists] about what should be counted as canonical knowledge in some areas of the discipline…[yet] this notion of canonical concepts does useful work even if the commonalities the community actually share in their thinking are often a little weaker and more diffuse than would be the case if they shared genuinely canonical concepts." (Taber, 2019)
Read about scientific concepts, canonical concepts, historical concepts…
[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index
