Summary: Chapter 9 in What Is This Thing Called Science? / Alan Chalmers

What Is This Thing Called Science? / Alan Chalmers

Chapter 9: Theories as structures: Research programs

-          Commonalities Kuhn and Popper:

o   Reject positivism and inductivism

o   Priority to theory over observation

-          Lakatos set out to modify falsificationism to rid it of its difficulties and does so by drawing on some of Kuhn’s ideas.

-          Fundamental principles = hard core of a research program à basis from which the program is to develop, general hypotheses

-          Any inadequacy in the match between an articulated program and observation is to be attributed to the supplementary assumptions rather than the hard core

-          Protective belt = sum of additional hypotheses supplementing the hard core à its role is to protect the hard core from falsification

-          Assumptions in the protective belt are to be modified in an attempt to improve the research program (the match of its predictions and the actual results of observation and experiment)

-          Negative heuristic = what the scientist should not do

-          Positive heuristic = what the scientist should do, suggestions on how to sophisticate the protective belt

-          Early work in a research program takes place in spite of apparent falsifications. In this early stage confirmations rather than falsifications are of paramount significance

-          Indication of the merit of a program > extent to which it leads to novel predictions that are confirmed

-          Progressive research program = retains its coherence and at least intermittently leads to novel predictions that are confirmed

-          Degenerating program = loses its coherence and/or fails to lead to confirmed new predictions

-          Scientific revolution for Lakatos: the replacement of a degenerating program by a progressive one

Methodology within a program and the comparison of programs

-          No ad hoc modifications

-          Modifications or additions to the protective belt must be independently testable and open up opportunity for new tests

-          Impossible to do research that departs from the hard core

-          Novel predictions: one program is superior to another insofar as it is a more successful predictor of novel phenomena

-          Support Quine/Durkheim thesis

-          Not irrational to remain working on a degenerating program if there are possible ways to bring it to life again

-          Appraisal of research programs can only be done with historical hindsight

Problems with Lakatos’s methodology

-          Hard core of a program is rendered unfalsifiable by the methodological decisions of its protagonists à lack of evidence of those rational decisions and yet they are the locus of distinction between his position and that of Kuhn

-          Methodology can only make judgments whether a program is scientific or not with the benefit of historical hindsight àno position to diagnose a contemporary program

-          Support with history of science but only that of physics, assumed that other fields share the characteristics of physics à problematic because especially in the social sciences, knowledge produced itself is a component of the system that is studied, so a change in theory can bring about a change in the system

Back to:  What Is This Thing Called Science? / Alan Chalmers

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