About this video

• Video Title: Philosophy of Science 9 - Research Programmes
• Channel: Kane B
• Speakers: Kane B
• Duration: 00:34:14

Overview

This video explains Imre Lakatos's theory of "research programmes" as a way to understand the philosophy of science. It contrasts Lakatos's ideas with those of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, arguing that research programmes offer a more sophisticated development of falsificationism and a rational methodology for scientific progress. The video details the structure of research programmes (hard core and protective belt), their negative and positive heuristics, and how they can be judged as progressive or degenerating. It also discusses challenges and potential limitations of Lakatos's theory, concluding with a suggestion for combining Lakatos's and Kuhn's concepts.

Key takeaways

• Lakatos's Research Programmes: Science progresses through a series of theories organized into "research programmes," each with a "hard core" of fundamental principles that are not directly tested and a "protective belt" of auxiliary theories used to make predictions.
• Heuristics: Research programmes have a negative heuristic (protecting the hard core) and a positive heuristic (guiding modifications to the protective belt to make new predictions).
• Progressive vs. Degenerating Programmes: Progressive programmes generate new, confirmed predictions, while degenerating programmes fail to do so and may resort to ad hoc hypotheses. Science is judged by its progressive research programmes.
• Falsification and Demarcation: Lakatos's theory offers a solution to the demarcation problem (distinguishing science from pseudoscience) by identifying progressive research programmes as scientific, going beyond Popper's simple falsifiability criterion.
• Challenges to the Theory: Lakatos's model faces challenges regarding the time it takes to judge a programme, the difficulty in defining the "hard core" in real-time, and the potential for degenerating programmes to be revived, leading to questions about the rationality of switching programmes.
• Integration with Kuhn: A potential way to reconcile Lakatos's research programmes with Kuhn's paradigms is to view research programmes as competing within a field, with one eventually winning and becoming part of a larger, growing paradigm.