{"agent_id":"lakatos","agent_name":"Imre Lakatos","slug":"the-methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes","label":"The methodology of scientific research programmes: is the unit of appraisal the research programme rather than the individual theory, against Kuhnian incommensurability, against Feyerabend's anything-goes, and against naive Popperian falsificationism?","topic":"The methodology of scientific research programmes","question":"Is the unit of appraisal the research programme rather than the individual theory, against Kuhnian incommensurability, against Feyerabend's anything-goes, and against naive Popperian falsificationism?","position":"The unit of appraisal in the philosophy of science is not the individual theory but the *scientific research programme* — a sequence of theories sharing a hard core of metaphysical commitments held immune from refutation, surrounded by a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses adjusted under empirical pressure, governed by a negative heuristic (preserve the hard core) and a positive heuristic (the agenda for developing the protective belt). Programmes are evaluated as progressive when they predict novel facts that turn out to be true and as degenerating when they only save appearances through ad hoc protective-belt modifications. The methodology is the rigorous answer Popper's naive falsificationism could not provide, the Kuhnian historicism could not provide, and Feyerabend's anything-goes refused to provide. Science is rational across paradigm shifts because research programmes can be compared on progressive and degenerating grounds.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The unit of appraisal in the philosophy of science is not the individual theory but the *scientific research programme* — a sequence of theories sharing a hard core of metaphysical commitments held immune from refutation, surrounded by a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses adjusted under empirical pressure, governed by a negative heuristic (preserve the hard core) and a positive heuristic (the agenda for developing the protective belt).","n":[1,2,3,4]}],[{"t":"Programmes are evaluated as progressive when they predict novel facts that turn out to be true and as degenerating when they only save appearances through ad hoc protective-belt modifications.","n":[]},{"t":"The methodology is the rigorous answer Popper's naive falsificationism could not provide, the Kuhnian historicism could not provide, and Feyerabend's anything-goes refused to provide.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Science is rational across paradigm shifts because research programmes can be compared on progressive and degenerating grounds.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"\"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes\" in *Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge* (Lakatos + Musgrave eds., 1970), reprinted as the lead essay of *Philosophical Papers Vol I* (1978); \"History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions\" (1971, also in Vol I); \"Popper on Demarcation and Induction\" (1974, in Vol I); the methodological case studies in *Philosophical Papers Vol II* (1978) on Bohr's early quantum theory, the Michelson-Morley experiments, the Copernican revolution; the 1973 LSE lectures in *For and Against Method* (Motterlini ed., 1999). Reception: John Worrall as the literary executor and the editor of the orthodox-Lakatosian-Popperian tradition; Paul Feyerabend in *Against Method* (1975) and the Lakatos-Feyerabend correspondence in *For and Against Method*; Thomas Kuhn's response in the *Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge* volume; Brendan Larvor's *Lakatos: An Introduction* (Routledge 1998); John Kadvany's *Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason* (Duke 2001) on the historicist-Hegelian inheritance of the SRP architectonic.","works":["\"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes\" in *Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge* (Lakatos + Musgrave eds., 1970), reprinted as the lead essay of *Philosophical Papers Vol I* (1978)","\"History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions\" (1971, also in Vol I)","\"Popper on Demarcation and Induction\" (1974, in Vol I)","the methodological case studies in *Philosophical Papers Vol II* (1978) on Bohr's early quantum theory, the Michelson-Morley experiments, the Copernican revolution","the 1973 LSE lectures in *For and Against Method* (Motterlini ed., 1999)"],"reception":"John Worrall as the literary executor and the editor of the orthodox-Lakatosian-Popperian tradition; Paul Feyerabend in *Against Method* (1975) and the Lakatos-Feyerabend correspondence in *For and Against Method*; Thomas Kuhn's response in the *Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge* volume; Brendan Larvor's *Lakatos: An Introduction* (Routledge 1998); John Kadvany's *Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason* (Duke 2001) on the historicist-Hegelian inheritance of the SRP architectonic.","status":"settled-as-articulated","era":"1922-1974","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Philosophical Papers Vol I - The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes","page":"pp. 186–187","canonical":"","quote":"I call this belt a protective belt because it protects the hard core from refutations: anomalies are not taken as refutations of the hard core but of some hypothesis in the protective belt. Partly under empirical pressure (but partly planned according to its heuristic) the protective belt is constantly modified, increased, complicated, while the hard core remains intact.","label":"Philosophical Papers Vol I - The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, pp. 186–187"},{"n":2,"work":"Philosophical Papers Vol I - The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes","page":"pp. 185–186","canonical":"","quote":"But, as it happens, the Copernican Revolution can be explained as rational on the basis of the methodology of scientific research programmes. The methodology of scientific research programmes is a new demarcationist methodology (i.e.","label":"Philosophical Papers Vol I - The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, pp. 185–186"},{"n":3,"work":"I SCIENCE: REASON OR RELIGION","page":"pp. 54–55","canonical":"","quote":"The most important such series in the growth of science are characterized by a certain continuity which connects their members. This continuity evolves from a genuine research programme adumbrated at the start. The programme consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristic), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristic).","label":"I SCIENCE: REASON OR RELIGION, pp. 54–55"},{"n":4,"work":"For and Against Method - LSE Lectures + Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence","page":"pp. 22–23","canonical":"","quote":"I have claimed that the unit of appraisal for the growth of knowledge is a series of theories, in which each one is obtained by adding some auxiliary clauses in order to accommodate certain anomalies and produce new predictions.","label":"For and Against Method - LSE Lectures + Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, pp. 22–23"},{"n":5,"work":"For and Against Method - LSE Lectures + Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence","page":"p. 119","canonical":"","quote":"How will a similar system behave? Is it stable? The analyst faces a problem as difficult as it is interesting. And yet it is not the same problem which is present in the natural context. Real stars are not material points, and are also subject to forces other than Newtonian attraction. gramme is progressive or degenerating.","label":"For and Against Method - LSE Lectures + Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, p. 119"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-method-of-proofs-and-refutations","label":"The method of proofs and refutations: is mathematics fallible, quasi-empirical, and historically developing, with the dialectical method of conjecture-counterexample-lemma-incorporation as the actual logic of mathematical discovery, against Hilbertian-Bourbakian formalism?"},{"slug":"rational-reconstruction-and-the-internal-external-history-di","label":"Rational reconstruction and the internal/external history distinction: is the history of science to be written as the rational reconstruction of the internal logic of research programmes, against Kuhn's sociology-of-knowledge historicism?"},{"slug":"the-popper-relationship-and-the-popper-0-popper-1-popper-2-d","label":"The Popper relationship and the Popper-0/Popper-1/Popper-2 distinction: is Lakatos the sophisticated methodological falsificationist Popper's late work was reaching for, or is the SRP framework a covert subversion of orthodox Popperianism?"},{"slug":"the-hungarian-hegelian-formation","label":"The Hungarian-Hegelian formation: are there 'two Lakatoses' (the Anglo Popperian successor and the buried Hungarian-Hegelian whose Lukácsian-Marxist inheritance shapes the dialectical method of Proofs and Refutations and the historicist architectonic of the SRP framework)?"}]}