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|First Name=Imre
|Last Name=Lakatos
|Summary='''Imre Lakatos''' (1922–1974) was a Hungarian-born philosopher who studied demarcation criteria and theory choice in science.[[CiteRef::Musgrave and Pigden (2016)]] [[CiteRef::Chalmers (2013)]] A protege of [[Karl Popper]], Lakatos attempted to respond to problems posed by the work of Popper and [[Thomas Kuhn|Kuhn]]. His ''Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes'' (MSRP) offers a holistic approach to theory choice which extends beyond Popper's falsificationism, and instead assesses a particular research program as progressive or degenerative, depending on its overall record of predictive and explanatory successes and failures. Lakatos later entered into a correspondence with [[Paul Feyerabend]], with the goal of addressing Feyerabend’s objections to the MSRP. He met an untimely death due to a heart attack at the age of 51. Some of Feyerabend’s objections remain open challenging to this day.
|Historical Context=Much of Lakatos’ work was a response to the problems of Popper’s falsificationism, which was expressed in a series of works published between 1935 and the early '70's. Lakatos rejected the idea that a false prediction was alone grounds for rejecting a theory. Most theories, he pointed out, are born in an “ocean of anomalies” and are therefore falsified from the moment of their inception. For example, Copernican heliocentric astronomy predicts that the stars should change in apparent position as the Earth revolves around the sun, but for three centuries after Copernicus proposed his theory, all attempts to detect this stellar parallax failed. Astronomers nevertheless accepted the theory on other grounds. The failure of Newtonian mechanics to account for the motions of the planet Mercury was known for many decades, during which the theory also wasn't rejected.[[CiteRef::Musgrave and Pigden (2016)]] A well known criticism of falsificationism, which Lakatos championed, was that the failure of a prediction could be due to a problem anywhere in the network of theories and auxiliary assumptions responsible for that prediction. Lakatos thus argued that Popper's theory was overly restrictive and inconsistent with much of scientific practice. In scientific practice, Lakatos observed that if a theory is the best available of its kind, it is typically allowed to undergo modifications to account for all data and not rejected.
* it is not in organic unity with the rest of the programme (''ad hoc<sub>3</sub>'').
The term ''organic unity'' is intended to mean that modifications should be contiguous with the rest of the programme. For instance, if the research programme is “natural selection”, a modification which adds the proposition “extra-terrestrial beings intervened with human evolution” would not be contiguous – not in organic unity – with the rest of the research programme and is therefore ''ad hoc<sub>3</sub>''.
Given any modification to a research programme’s protective belt, any research programme P1 would subsequently become P2. In this way we can track changes to research programme P from P1 to Pn and retrospectively ascertain if the modifications made have been progressive or degenerative. However, the degeneration of a research program doesn't necessitate its dismissal. Rather, given research programmes A and B, where programme A has been degenerating and programme B has been progressing, Lakatos suggests that the scientific community should invest most of its resources into A. The community should not invest all resources into A because there have been instances where a degenerative programme has become progressive, such as heliocentrism and atomism. According to Lakatos, working on a degenerative programme is not prohibited, but it is irrational given that it has ceased to bear fruit.
=== Lakatos on Demarcation Criteria ===
The demarcation between “progressive” and “degenerative” research programmes also serves to demarcate between science and pseudoscience. A scientific theory should not only explain past and present phenomena; it should also have the ability to be applied to and posit the existence of future phenomena. For example, proving that an object falls in an experiment does not make the Newtonian research programme scientific. However, the Newtonian research programme predicted that comets move in either hyperbolas, parabolas or ellipses (contrary to the contemporary theory that they move in straights lines). Using this hypothesis, Edmond Halley successfully predicted the return of Halley’s comet to the minute. Such predictions affirm that the Newtonian research programme was progressive and, therefore, scientific. On the other hand, a research programme such as astrology, which merely provides post hoc explanations and is subject to ''ad hoc '' modifications, is considered pseudoscientific.
|Criticism=Paul Feyerabend pointed out that there exists a serious problem in how one can justify working on a degenerating programme. Lakatos’ response to Feyerabend's criticism was ambiguous. While it is irrational to work on a degenerating programme, Lakatos held that it was not prohibited. Just because a research programme is degenerating does not mean that it should be rejected. Feyerabend's objection, however, remains open because Lakatos failed to provide anything more than stipulation.
Feyerabend also argued that a problem exists with the notion of a time limit. If a research programme has been degenerating for some time, how do we know when to abandon it? Heliocentrism and atomism had degenerated for well over a millennium before being reinvigorated and subsequently accepted. On the other hand, fields such as homeopathy or psychoanalysis, which are nascent in comparison to the aforementioned theories, are easily ascribed the title of pseudoscience. Lakatos’ response was that there is no discernable time limit; but once again, he failed to address the actual problem.
