The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes

by Imre Lakatos

Book Overview

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521280311
• ISBN13: 9780521280310
• Release Date: November 1980
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Popper redux, and then some

"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." "A series of theories is theoretically progressive ... if each new theory has some excess empirical content over its predecessor, that is, if it predicts some novel, hitherto unexpected fact. ... [It] is also empirically progressive ... if some of this excess empirical content is also corroborated, that is, if each new theory leads to the discovery of some new fact. Finally, let us call a problemshift progressive if it is both theoretically and empirically progressive, and degenerating if it is not." (pp. 33-34). "Justificationists valued 'confirming' instances of a theory; naive falsificationists stressed the 'refuting' instances; for the methodological falsificationist [i.e. Lakatos] it is the---rather rare---corroborating instances of the excess information which are the crucial ones ... We are no longer interested in the thousands of trivial verifying instances nor in the hundreds of readily available anomalies." (p. 36). One implication is that it may be perfectly rational to work on a theory even if it rests on false assumptions. "Indeed, some of the most important research programmes in the history of science were grafted on to older programmes with which they were blatantly inconsistent." (p. 56). In quantum mechanics, for example, "the decision to go ahead with temporarily inconsistent foundations was taken by Einstein in 1905, but even he wavered in 1913, when Bohr forged forward again" (p. 59). Similarly, "Cartesian push-mechanics" was "inconsistent with Newton's theory of gravitation," but "Newton worked both on his positive heuristic (successfully) and on a reductionist programme (unsuccessfully), and disapproved both of Cartesians who, like Huyghens, thought that it was not worth wasting time on an 'unintelligible' programme and of some of his rash disciples who, like Cotes, thought that the inconsistency presented no problem" (p. 59). Another consequence is that "The history of science has been and should be a history of competing research programmes ..., but it has not been and must not become a succession of periods of normal science: the sooner competition starts, the better for progress. 'Theoretical pluralism' is better than 'theoretical monism'" (p. 69). I think Lakatos makes too much of the Popper/Kuhn dichotomy. Lakatos points out again and again that he "followed, and tried to improve, Popperian tradition" (p. 95), and has copious quotations and precise footnotes pointing to Popper. By contrast, Kuhn's theory is brusquely misrepresented without proper referencing; e.g. "there is no particular rational cause for the appearance of a Kuhnian 'crisis' ... 'Crisis' is a psychological concept; it is a contagious panic" (p. 90), for which there is no reference other than an inconspicuous "Kuhn [1970]" elsewhere on the page. This is all the more unfortunate since "Popper never abandoned his earlier (naive) falsification rules. He has demanded, until this day,

Methods of Scientific Research

Philosophy of Science is a crucial subset of philosophy, since it directly affects scientific research. We need to know what constitutes a properly constructed theory, and more to the point, which claims are not theoretical, or perhaps not even scientific. With that goal established, we need to know how to empirically verify the theory in question. Theories are developed within axiomatic systems, are based on assumptions, and present us with a compact thesis, or a set of theses. A theory is scientific if we can falsify it with empirical data. If a theory is not testable, then it is not a good theory, since we cannot accept or reject its propositions. An obvious point is to be raised here - when and under which conditions shall we reject a theory?Methodological studies flourished in the XX century with the works of Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, Imre Lakatos, Harold Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and other philosophers. The contribution of Imre Lakatos was significant. With his version of corroboration and refined fascificationism we were able to apply new standards towards the methods of rejection of scientific theories. A single rejection of the scientific theory is not likely to falsify it, unlike advocated previously. However, the main point is that while the absolute truth is always of importance, i.e. whether a given theory is considered "true" because we have not been able to negatively falsify that theory; it is more important that various theories can be compared to each other, even if they are all imperfect. To this end, we can specify a set of thresholds, and say that a research programme A is more empirically valid than a research programme B if it does withstand a larger number of empirical tests. Of course, as simple as it sounds, it is a useful method of evaluation of theories, and can be augmented as needed within a given science.Philosophy of Science and methodology is of utmost importance to theorists, since more often than not, nonscientific methods of theory construction are used, and even worse, empirical data are inductively used to hypothesize about the causes for the pattern of these data. It's methodologically invalid and by construction, these theories are not falsifiable since they are derived from data. This is true especially within economic theory; labor economics and macroeconomics in particular.The works of Lakatos are summarized and condensed in various descriptive volumes on the Philosophy of Science, however it is illuminating to read the original works of this ingenious philosopher, since by doing so you gain an additional layer of understanding. I will not go as far as saying that it should have been a must reading for any scientist, since such proposition would be hardly realistic, but I will say that it is a treat for those who have already tasted methodology in a compact form, and would like to expand their knowledge.