AIM Framework glossary
Provenance Obligation
Canonical definition
Where a general theory that meets the Completeness Criterion for General Theory Status contradicts the foundational assumptions of a rival account, the rival field is obliged to account for the evidential provenance of those assumptions: how they were first arrived at, on what evidence, and against what alternatives were available and set aside. The field must then either defend the assumptions on their merits or supply a replacement theory discharging the same explanatory obligation under the Replacement Requirement. Treating the assumptions as settled by precedent alone, without either defence or replacement, does not satisfy the obligation.
Explanation
A field's foundations are usually inherited rather than chosen. Nobody now working in it adopted them, and those who did adopted them in good faith on the best evidence then available, which was often thin and is now old. That is not a criticism; it is how disciplines begin. The obligation bites at a specific and later moment: when a theory arrives that explains what the field explains and more, and contradicts the foundation. At that point "we have always assumed this" stops being an answer. The field must either show, from evidence, that the assumption still holds, or produce something that does the same explanatory work. What it may not do is treat age as warrant. This is deliberately reciprocal. It extends the Replacement Requirement, which the framework accepts as binding on itself, back onto the theories doing the challenging, and it applies to AIM on the same terms as to anyone else.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle (methodological).
Derivation
Chapter 3, Section 3.4.5, derived there as a consequence of the Replacement Requirement.