Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge

Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. (Eds.)

Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. (Eds.). (1970). Criticism and the growth of knowledge: Volume 4: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1965. Cambridge University Press.

Annotated Link

Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research by Thomas S. Kuhn

What Kuhn and Popper agree on:

• Rejection of progress by accretion perspective.

• When old theories fail to meet challenges posed by logic, experiment, or observation, revolution occurs, and a new theory replaces it.

What Kuhn and Popper differs

• Popper characterized the entire scientific enterprise in terms that apply only to the revolutionary part.

  • Kuhn thinks tests like Popoer described exist, but only in normal science, and they are not normally used to reject theory.

  • Tests that reject the theory only happen in revolutionary science and are always preceded by a crisis first.

• Critical discourse marks the transition to a science

  • Once the field establishes/transitions to science, people operate without a discourse on the broader theory until a crisis happens.

• Testing and Puzzle-Solving as Demarcation

  • Testing and puzzle-solving is the line of demarcation, but Kuhn has a different process to Popper.

  • Using astrology as an example, Kunn rejects the claims that astrology is not science because it is non-falsifiable (it was falsifiable) or how practitioners explained failure,

  • Kuhn thinks the non-scientific part of astrology is that failure, although it can be explained, does not give rise to new puzzles and challenges. No man can use the failure to attempt to revise the astrological tradition constructively.

• Kuhn sees Popper's view of "we can learn from our mistake" differently

  • Kuhn's "learn from mistake" happens in normal science, when people in the same paradigm can point out how a person misusing the theory

  • Popper's "learn from mistake" is when a theory replaces the other one. In Kuhn's view, that is not a mistake; it is simply a theory that was not previously a mistake that has become one, or scientists have made the mistake of clinging to a theory for too long. Fundamentally, Kuhn and Popper are not inductivists, so no mistake can be made in arriving at a theory.

• No conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced

  • Fundamental part of science for Kuhn

  • An essential qualification that threatens the integrity of his position for Popper.

• Popper provided an ideology, not logic. For example, Popper's verisimilitude is too rigorous.

Against 'Normal Science' by J.W.N. Watkins

There are conflicts between Kuhn's and Popper's views. Kuhn's vision of "Normal Science" is considered to be unscientific in Popper's view, while Kuhn's vision of "Extraordinary Science" (an anomaly) is considered to be the norm in Popper's view.

Testing

• Kuhn believed puzzle solving, not testing, is the demarcation of science.

• Watkins clarified that Popper relies on testable not actual testing to be demarcation

• Watkins pointed out that many examples of an empirically successful theory are superseded by more testable theories, thus supporting Popper's view. So, a scientific crisis may have theoretical rather than empirical causes.

Impossibility of Normal Science to Extraordinary Science

• Watkins pointed out three theses from Kuhn:

  • Paradigm-Monopoly thesis: A scientist can only operate under one paradigm

  • No-Interregnum thesis: No break between two paradigm

  • Incompatibility thesis: Incommensurability between two paradigm

• Based on those theses, the instant gestalt switch that leads the first people to develop new paradigm shouldn't happen. It requires that the new paradigm to be immediately powerful at the point of conception, which is impartical and not true historically.

• The conclusion is the scientific community might not have 100% abandoned the discourse within the paradigm.

Does the Distinction between Normal and Revolutionary Science Hold Water? by Stephen Toulmin

Kuhn's original theory implies the existence of drastic discontinuity in scientific history due to paradigm switching, which doesn't comply with some historical examples. But if we reduce the drasticness of paradigm switching, we sort of took away the main point of Kuhn.

Proposed alternative view is to see normal science as adding variations. Therefore there are three dimensions: the quantity of variation, the direction of variation, and the criteria for selecting variations to replace original theory. Parallel to evolution.