Rational Versus Sociological Reductionism: Imre Lakatos and the Edinburgh School

Abstract

The publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions initiated a new era in history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Its influence on history of science, though pervasive, has been indirect. The model of scientific development expounded in Structure has never been fully applied (not even by Kuhn himself) for elucidating a past scientific episode.1 On the other hand, by indicating that the very content of scientific knowledge is amenable to sociological analysis, it had a significant effect on sociology of science and thus indirectly on history of science. Given the well-known and profound transformation that Kuhn’s work effected in our philosophical understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge and its considerable effect on sociology of science, its indirect influence on history of science should not be underestimated. Two recent historiographical research programs, Imre Lakatos’s Methodology of Scientific Research Programs and the ‘strong program in the sociology of science’ associated with a group of sociologists in the University of Edinburgh, emerged in an attempt to respond to or develop certain aspects of The Structure. Their aim was to reconstruct past scientific episodes either, as in Lakatos’s case, in the light of a philosophical theory of scientific rationality, or, as in the strong program’s, in the light of a sociological theory of scientific practice. Since both programs were considerably influenced by Kuhn and, as I will argue below, were reductionist in that they aimed at reducing historical explanation to a rational or sociological core, it is instructive to make a comparative evaluation of them.