From Kuhn to Lakatos to Laudan

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter provides the overview of Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan methodology of scientific research programs. Kuhn decisively redirected the philosophy of science away from the logical empiricist or positivist account that was then orthodox. The positivists limited their account of science to the categories of theory and evidence and the relationships between them. The two most important of these relationships were said to be “explanation” and “confirmation”. Kuhn's main contribution was to describe the important role super theoretical entities, such as “world hypotheses,” play in science. Kuhn called these types of entities paradigms. Lakatos renamed them research programs and Laudan dubbed them research traditions. Kuhn never adequately specified the connection between paradigm and theory. Lakatos' first innovation was to specify this relationship with great clarity, and in doing so he also explicated further the role of metaphysics in science. Metaphysical assumptions appear as core principles that pass unchanged through all the theories of a research program, that is, through those theories that succeed one another as the program evolves. The sequence of theories itself constitutes the research program. Laudan attempted to direct philosophy of science away from explaining facts and toward “solving problems.” The philosophy of science begun by Kuhn rejected the positivists' attempts to accommodate all of science in the categories of theory and observation. On the positivist view, “explanation” was the primary relationship linking the two descriptive categories: theories explained observations. But Laudan also questioned the primacy of explanation. He argued that the dynamics of science are best understood as a search for new problem solutions. For this reason Overton spoke of research programs solving problems.