Imre Lakatos

Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) was a Hungarian philosopher who studied demarcation criteria and theory choice in science. Working alongside Karl Popper, Lakatos attempted to respond to the flaws he saw existing in Popperian and Kuhnian philosophy. Lakatos’ Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (MSRP) is a holistic approach to demarcation criteria, which aims to explain theory choice in terms of acceptance, use, and pursuit by assessing if a particular research programme is progressive or degenerate. Lakatos later entered into a correspondence with Paul Feyerabend, with the goal of addressing Feyerabend’s objections to the MSRP. Due to Lakatos’ passing, some of Feyerabend’s objections were not successfully answered and remain open to this day.

Historical Context

Much of Lakatos’ work was geared towards resolving the flaws he saw existing within Popper’s theory of falsificationism. While Lakatos agreed that theories should be appraised in terms of their empirical content, he objected to the idea that a theory should be rejected once it has been falsified. He maintained that if falsificationism were true our theories must be conceived through the falsification of other theories. This means that theories are born in an “ocean of anomalies” and are therefore falsified from the moment of their conception. This can be better understood as asserting that if falsification alone is how we are supposed to select our theories, then any new theory only serves to of explain away the anomalies the previous theory could not. If a theory encounters an anomaly it cannot explain, the Popperian view would have scientists discard the theory in favour of a theory which accounts for this anomaly. For Lakatos, however, there is a sizeable difference between “falsification” and “rejection”, a difference which Popperian fablsificationism fails to address. If a theory is the best available theory of its kind, it should be allowed to undergo modifications to account for all the data and avoid rejection.

Lakatos also addressed problems he saw as existing in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis, theories with different taxonomies cannot be compared. However Lakatos held that theories employing different taxonomies could be compared provided they be rationally reconstructed in a common, modern language. For example, the Phlogiston theory held that all combustible substances had within them a hypothetical substance known as “phlogiston”, which is understood today by modern chemistry as the presence of combustible elements such as hydrogen and oxygen. This serves to illustrate that a rejected theory in the history of science can be expressed in modern terms despite employing a different taxonomy. Lakatos accused Kuhn of depicting the process of scientific change as completely irrational. If there truly existed a problem of incommensurability in science, then there would be no method to demarcate between science and pseudoscience, and no way of measuring scientific progress.

Main Contributions to the Philosophy of Scientific Change

Lakatos on Theory Choice

Lakatos believed that scientific theories could not and should not be appraised on an individual basis. Rather, a theory should be appraised holistically and should not only consider a theory’s current state, but also its track-record. Lakatos developed the notion of research programmes to explain this idea. A research programme is broken into two parts: its “hard core” and its “protective belt”. The “hard core” of a research programme is comprised of the indispensable propositions of a research programme which are immune to change; any variation to the “hard core” of a research programme would result in the creation of a different research programme. The “protective belt” is comprised of the auxiliary propositions which can be subject to modification to guard against falsification and allow for the explanation of anomalous phenomena. For example, the “hard core” of the Newtonian Physics research programme would contain Newton’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd laws as well as the law of gravity, while its protective belt would consist of such things as: “there are 7 planets in the solar system”, Atmospheric Refraction Theory, or “Planets are spinning spheroids”. Lakatos held that a research programme should be chosen for both its “explanatory power” and its “heuristic power”. That is to say that a theory is accepted for its ability to both explain past and present phenomena, as well as its ability to be applied to and posit the existence of future phenomena and anomalies. Given any disproving instance of a theory, if the theory possesses both greater heuristic and explanatory powers than its counterparts, its protective belt should be allowed to undergo modifications to save itself from falsification. These modifications should be “progressive” and intended to save the research programme from degenerating. This for Lakatos represents the difference between falsification and rejection. A research programme is considered “progressive” if it can make predictions later confirmed by experiment, much in line with the Popperian notion of “novel predictions”. On the other hand, if a theory fails to offer such predictions and merely attempts to “save” itself from a disproving instance, it is considered “degenerate”. Lakatos established the following criteria for appraising modifications:

Progressive Modifications	Degenerative Modifications
Increase the empirical content of a research programme by making predictions and increasing its precision	Do not increase the empirical content, make predictions or increase the precision of a programme (ad hoc 1)
Add excess empirical content which has been corroborated though experiments and observation	Introduce excess content, but fail to corroborate the excess content (ad hoc 2)
Are in organic unity with the rest of the programme	Are not in organic unity with the rest of the programme (ad hoc 3)


 The term organic unity is intended to mean that modifications should be contiguous with the rest of the programme. 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 hoc3.
 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 degenerate. However, just because a research programme is degenerating, doesn’t mean that it should necessarily be dismissed. Rather, given two 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, but not all. This is because there have been instance where a degenerate programme has become progressive, such as heliocentrism and atomism. According to Lakatos, working on a degenerate 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 “degenerate” 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 provide post hoc explanations and is subject to ad hoc modifications are considered pseudoscientific.

Criticisms & New Directions

Paul Feyerabend pointed out that there exists a serious problem in how one can justify working on a degenerating programme. Lakatos’ response to this was ambiguous. While it is irrational to work on a degenerating programme, he held that it was not prohibited. Just because a research programme is degenerating does not mean that it should be rejected. Feyerabend objection, however, remains open, since 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, to this fails to address the problem.

Authors

Jacob MacKinnon, 2015