Abstract
Though Imre Lakatos's ideas have been of first importance to recent History and Philosophy of Science, one of his central theses has been ill-received by philosophers and historians alike. I refer to his thesis that historiography of science is (and should be) so laden with normative philosophical doctrines about scientific rationality that “history of science without philosophy of science is blind.” (1971, p.91). In defending this ‘norm-ladenness thesis’ (as I shall call it), Lakatos employs a notion of “rational reconstruction” and “internal history” that has been indicted by Thomas Kuhn as “not history at all but philosophy fabricating examples.” (1971, p. 143). Kuhn's charge, echoed in varying degrees by Holton (1974, p. 68), Laudan (1977, p. 170), McMullin (1970, p.33), Suppe (1977, p. 669), and others, has such wide currency that I shall call it ‘the Received Critique’ of Lakatos's norm-ladenness thesis.
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