Reconstructing Lakatos: a reassessment of Lakatos’ epistemological project in the light of the Lakatos Archive

Abstract Based on the material in the Lakatos Archive, this paper reconstructs, and then re-assesses, Lakatos’ epistemological project by placing it in the context of the debate on the role of reason in the history of science, and of the justification of rationality as a normative notion. It is claimed that Lakatos’ most fruitful ideas come from a peculiar philosophical combination of Hegelian historicism and Popperian fallibilism. The original tension, however, cannot be ultimately resolved. As a consequence, the problems that Lakatos has to deal with in his attempt to justify a set of genuinely epistemological canons of scientific rationality that are not reducible to psychology or sociology of knowledge stand as a warning for any normative philosophy of science that takes history at its face value.

[1]  D. Bloor,et al.  Knowledge and Social Imagery , 1977 .

[2]  Brendan Larvor,et al.  Lakatos: An Introduction , 1998 .

[3]  H. Poincaré.  Science and Hypothesis , 1906 .

[4]  I. Lakatos.  Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic , 1968 .

[5]  P. Feyerabend.  On the Critique of Scientific Reason , 1976 .

[6]  W. Newton-Smith.  The rationality of science , 1983 .

[7]  I. Lakatos,et al.  Mathematics, science and epistemology: What does a mathematical proof prove? , 1978 .

[8]  Clifford Ambrose Truesdell,et al.  An Idiot's Fugitive Essays On Science , 1984 .

[9]  J. Worrall.  The Value of a Fixed Methodology* , 1988, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[10]  G. Hegel,et al.  The Phenomenology of Spirit , 1979 .

[11]  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,et al.  Elements of the Philosophy of Right , 1820 .

[12]  Árpád Szabó,et al.  Anfänge des euklidischen Axiomensystems , 1960 .

[13]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence , 1999 .

[14]  R. Swinburne,et al.  The Philosophy of Karl Popper , 1975 .

[15]  Zheng Yuxin,et al.  From the Logic of Mathematical Discovery to the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes* , 1990, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[16]  C. R. Fay.  The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory , 1958 .

[17]  P. Kitcher.  The Advancement of Science , 1993 .

[18]  Paul K. Feyerabend,et al.  For and Against Method , 1999 .

[19]  N. Goodman.  Fact, Fiction, and Forecast , 1955 .

[20]  P. Kitcher.  The Naturalists Return , 1992 .

[21]  L. Laudan.  If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It , 1989, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[22]  E. Zahar.  Einstein's Revolution: A Study In Heuristic , 1989 .

[23]  P. Feyerabend.  Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge , 1976 .

[24]  S. Feferman.  The Logic of Mathematical Discovery vs. the Logical Structure of Mathematics , 1978, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

[25]  Brendan Larvor,et al.  Lakatos' mathematical Hegelianism , 1999 .

[26]  B. Latour.  Science in Action , 1987 .

[27]  I. Hacking.  IMRE LAKATOS'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE* , 1979, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[28]  J. Worrall.  Fix it and be Damned: A Reply to Laudan , 1989, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[29]  I. Lakatos,et al.  Proofs and Refutations: Frontmatter , 1976 .

[30]  A. Musgrave,et al.  Method or Madness , 1976 .

[31]  A. Fine.  Conceptual Change in Mathematics and Science: Lakatos' Stretching Refined , 1978, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

[32]  P. Churchland.  A neurocomputational perspective , 1989 .

[33]  I. Lakatos.  History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions , 1970, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

[34]  R. Popkin,et al.  The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza , 1984 .

[35]  P. Asquith,et al.  Psa 1984 Proceedings of the 1984 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , 1978 .

[36]  Clifford Ambrose Truesdell.  An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science: Methods, Criticism, Training, Circumstances , 2011 .

[37]  W. Yourgrau,et al.  Physics, Logic, and History , 1970 .

[38]  C. Bicchieri,et al.  PSA: proceedings of the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , 2002 .

[39]  E. Zahar.  Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Invention?* , 1983, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[40]  John Worrall,et al.  Scientific Discovery and Theory-Confirmation , 1985 .

[41]  Edward Stein,et al.  Without good reason : the rationality debate in philosophy and cognitive science , 1996 .

[42]  E. Zemach.  Human understanding , 1992, Synthese.

[43]  I. Lakatos,et al.  The problem of inductive logic , 1970 .

[44]  Replies to Critics , 1970 .

[45]  Jancis Long.  Lakatos in Hungary , 1998 .

[46]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[47]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  The methodology of scientific research programmes: Popper on demarcation and induction , 1978 .

[48]  I. Lakatos.  PROOFS AND REFUTATIONS (I)*† , 1963, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[49]  G. Forrai.  From the method of proofs and refutations to the methodology of scientific research programmes , 1993 .

[50]  T. Broadbent,et al.  Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , 1972 .

[51]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes , 1978 .

[52]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  The methodology of scientific research programmes: Contents , 1978 .

[53]  I. Lakatos,et al.  The methodology of scientific research programmes: Newton's effect on scientific standards , 1978 .

[54]  Imre Lakatos,et al.  On the Uses of Rigorous Proof. (Book Reviews: Proofs and Refutations. The Logic of Mathematical Discovery) , 1977 .

[55]  John David Kadvany.  Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason , 2001 .