Lakatos’s Philosophy of Science
Lakatos vs. Kuhn:
Lakatos Kuhn
There is cumulative progress Rival paradigms are
in science as a result of incommensurable; therefore, scientific revolutions. saying that scientific
revolutions lead to scientific
progress (in a global sense) is
problematic.
Scientific change can be Scientific change must be
explained largely as a explained partly in
rational process. psychological and sociological
terms.
Theories as Structures: Clues from the History of Science—
· The history of science reveals that theories start as rather vague, imprecise, and somewhat incoherent ideas and only gradually become clear, precise, and coherent.
· Scientific concepts (e.g., force, mass, heat) acquire precise meanings only by being parts of coherently structured theories.
· Scientific theories grow and develop by being open-ended and having “research programs”—structures that contain advice and suggestions about how they should be developed and extended.
Lakatos’s Notion of a “Research Program”: Pertinent Concepts—
1. hard core—consists of very general hypotheses that give the research program its essential characteristics. (e.g., the thesis in Copernican astronomy that the planets orbit the sun)
2. protective belt—consists of auxiliary assumptions, assumptions underlying the description of the initial conditions, and observation statements that, although part of the research program, can be changed or augmented without abandoning the program itself. (e.g., assumptions about the relative accuracy of telescopic observations of the planets and naked-eye observations of the planets)
3. negative heuristic—the stipulation that the hard core of the program not be abandoned or modified.
4. positive heuristic—consists of “rough guidelines” for changing or augmenting the protective belt.” (e.g., guidelines about how to move from applying Newton’s laws of motion to idealized “point masses” to applying them to more realistic objects)
Lakatos’s Views about Scientific Method:
1. Additions and modifications to the protective belt must not be ad hoc—i.e., they must be independently testable.
2. No changes in the hard core are permitted.
3. There are no rules for choosing which additions or modifications to the protective belt to make. Ingenuity is encouraged.
Evaluating Research Programs: 2 Criteria—
1. A program should be sufficiently coherent that it maps out a definite program for future research.
2. A program should lead to the discovery of new phenomena at least occasionally.
Assessing the Relative Merits of Competing Research Programs:
· A research program is progressive to the degree to which it leads to the discovery of new phenomena.
· A research program is degenerating to the degree to which it fails to the discovery of new phenomena.
· In general, research program A is preferable to competing research program B if either A is more progressive than B or is degenerating less than B.
Lakatos as an Absolutist:
1. Rival scientific theories are to be evaluated by comparing the degrees to which they are progressive or degenerating.
2. The methodology of research programs can itself be tested by checking it against historical episodes in science to see whether it explains those episodes.
3. The methodology of research programs leads to scientific theories that get closer and closer to the truth.
Problems for Lakatos:
1. He claims that it is not necessarily irrational to hold onto a degenerating research program. This appears to be inconsistent with his universal criteria for assessing rival programs.
2. He assumes, but does not establish, that scientific methodology is rational and superior to non-scientific methodologies.