Foreword
1. Three types of falsification 3
2. Research programs 5
3. Formalism in science
and inter-revolutionary periods of science 23
List of sources used 26
Foreword
Imre Lakatos (1922-1974), born in Hungary, prepared a dissertation on philosophical questions of mathematics at Moscow University. For dissident views in the late 40s he spent two years in prison. After the Hungarian events of 1956 he emigrated, worked at the London School of Economics and political sciencewhere he became the most prominent among the followers
Popper. Lakatos was called the "knight of rationality" because he defended the principles of critical rationalism and believed that most of the processes in science can be rationalized. Lakatos wrote small, but very capacious works. You can get acquainted with his views from the books "Proofs and Refutations" published in Russian (Moscow, 1967) and
"Falsification and methodology of research programs" (Moscow, 1995)
.
He is one of the most profound and consistent critics of Kuhn's paradigm shift, and opposes the almost theological sense of Kuhn's scientific paradigm. Lakatos also developed one of the best models of the philosophy of science - the methodology of research programs.
1. Three types of falsification
Science, according to Lakatos, is and should be a competition between competing research programs. It is this idea that characterizes the so-called refined methodological falsificationism, developed by Lakatos in line with Popper's concept. Lakatos tries to soften the most acute angles of Popper's philosophy of science. He distinguishes three stages in the development of Popper's views: Popper0 - dogmatic falsification,
Popper1 is naive falsificationism, Popper2 is methodological falsificationism. The last period begins in the 50s and is associated with the development of a normative concept for the growth and development of knowledge based on comprehensive criticism. The first sees science as a process marked by solid constructions and infallible falsifications (such ideas were promoted by A. Iyer). Still, Popper showed the fallacy of this position, because the empirical basis of science is unstable and uncertain, and therefore there can be no talk of fixed protocol sentences and refutations that are not revised in principle.
That our refutations may also be wrong is confirmed by both logic and the history of science.
Methodological falsificationism corrects the error of dogmatists, showing the fragility of the empirical base of science and its proposed means of controlling hypotheses (this is shown by Popper in Logic scientific discovery"). However, Lakatos continues, methodological falsification is not enough. The picture of scientific knowledge, presented as a series of duels between theory and facts, is not entirely correct. In the struggle between theoretical and factual, Lakatos argues, there are at least three participants: facts and two competing theories. It becomes clear that a theory is out of date not when a fact that contradicts it is announced, but when a theory that is better than the previous one declares itself. Thus, Newtonian mechanics became a fact of the past only after the appearance of Einstein's theory.
In an effort to somehow mitigate the extremes of methodological falsificationism, I. Lakatos put forward the concept of research programs as a weakening mechanism of evolutionary epistemology.
2. Research programs
I. Lakatos focuses not on theories as such, but on research programs. The research program is the structural-dynamic unit of his model of science. To understand what a scientific search program is, let's recall Descartes's mechanism or
Newton, about evolutionary theory Darwin or Copernicanism.
A consistent change of theories arising from one core takes place within the framework of a program with an irrefutable methodology that shows its value, fruitfulness and progressiveness in comparison with another program.
Overcome by childhood illnesses, a theory needs time for its development, formation and strengthening.
Thus, the history of science appears, according to Lakatos, as the history of competition between research programs. This approach highlights the relationship between various epistemologies and the historiography of science, as well as the evolution of scientific research.
“Some philosophers,” writes I. Lakatos, “are so preoccupied with solving their epistemological and logical problems that they never reach the level at which they could be interested in the real history of science. If the real history does not meet their standards, they may with desperate courage they will propose to start anew the whole work of science. "
According to I. Lakatos, any methodological concept should function as historiographic. Its deepest assessment can be given through criticism of the rational reconstruction of the history of science that it offers.
This is the difference between Lakatos's position and the theories of Kuhn and Popper. Lakatos reproaches Popper for unhistoricality ("History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions"), in his principle of falsifiability, he sees a logical ambiguity that distorts history and adapts the latter to his theory of rationality.
On the other hand, Lakatos writes in Falsification and Methodology of Programs scientific research”(1970), according to Kuhn's theory, the scientific revolution is irrational, in it you can see only the material of adaptation to the psychology of the crowd. In mystical conversion from one paradigm to another, according to
Kuhnu, there are no rational rules, and therefore Kuhn constantly falls into the sphere social psychology discoveries. Scientific mutations are beginning to sound like a kind of religious conversion. Nevertheless, Lakatos himself remains within the problematic and atmosphere of Popper's falsificationism. Influence
Kuhn is also quite obvious (take, for example, the ideas of the "dogmatic function" of scientific inquiry and "progress through revolution"). Yet his arguments are often free from prejudice.
I. Lakatos develops his own, rather close to Coon's, concept of the methodology of scientific knowledge, which he calls the methodology of research programs. It is used by him not only to interpret the peculiarities of the development of science, but also to assess the various competing logics of scientific research.
According to I. Lakatos, the development of science is a competition of research programs, when one research program replaces another.
The essence of the scientific revolution lies in the fact that it is not one isolated theory that needs to be compared with empiricism, but a series of alternating theories, interconnected by common fundamental principles. He called this sequence of theories a research program.
Therefore, the fundamental unit for evaluating the process of developed science is not a theory, but a research program.
This program has the following structure. It includes a "hard core", which includes fundamental provisions that are not refutable for the supporters of the program (non-falsifiable hypotheses). That is, this is what is common to all of her theories. This is the metaphysics of the program: the most general ideas about reality, which are described by the theories included in the program; basic laws of interaction of elements of this reality; the main methodological principles associated with this program. For example, the hard core of the Newtonian program in mechanics was the idea that reality consists of particles of matter that move in absolute space and time in accordance with three well-known Newtonian laws and interact with each other according to the law of universal gravitation. Scientists working in a particular program accept its metaphysics, considering it adequate and unproblematic. But, in principle, there may be other metaphysicians defining alternative research programs. So, in the 17th century. along with Newtonian there was a Cartesian program in mechanics, the metaphysical principles of which differed significantly from Newtonian ones.
Thus, the kernel can be used to judge the nature of the entire program.
The program includes a negative heuristic, which is a set of auxiliary hypotheses that protect its core from falsification, from refuting facts. All ingenuity is directed towards his articulation and the development of hypotheses supporting the core (the so-called "protective belt"). This "protective belt" of the program draws on the fire of critical arguments. The ring of subsidiary hypotheses is designed to contain the attacks of control probes and in every possible way to protect and consolidate the core. That is, these are a kind of methodological rules, some of which indicate which paths should be avoided.
A positive heuristic is a strategy for selecting the priority problems and tasks to be solved by scientists. Having a positive heuristic allows some time to ignore criticism and anomalies and engage in constructive research. With such a strategy, scientists have the right to claim that they will still get to the incomprehensible and potentially refuting the program facts and that their existence is not a reason to abandon the program.
Falsifications, i.e. theoretical criticism and empirical refutation, is subject only to the hypothesis of "protective belt". By general agreement, tampering with the hard core is prohibited. The center of gravity in the methodology of Lakatos' research programs is shifted from the refutation of many competing hypotheses to falsification, and at the same time to the testing and confirmation of competing programs. At the same time, the elimination of individual hypotheses of the protective belt leaves the rigid core of the program intact.
According to Lakatos, research programs are the greatest scientific achievements and can be judged on the basis of progressive or regressive shift of problems. Those. the research program can develop progressively and regressively. The program is progressing until the presence of a hard core allows formulating more and more new hypotheses of the “protective layer”. When the production of such hypotheses weakens and it turns out to be impossible to explain new, let alone adapt abnormal facts, a regressive stage of development begins.
Those. in the first case, its theoretical development leads to the prediction of new facts. In the second, the program only explains new facts predicted by a competing program or discovered by chance. The research program experiences the greater difficulties, the more its competitor progresses, and vice versa, if the research program explains more than the competing one, then it forces the latter out of the community's turnover. This is due to the fact that the facts predicted by one program are always anomalies for another.
That is why the development of a different research program (for example,
Newton) takes place in the "sea of \u200b\u200banomalies" or, like Bohr, occurs on unrelated grounds. When subsequent modifications
"Protective belt" does not lead to the prediction of new facts, the program shows itself as regressive.
I. Lakatos emphasizes the great sustainability of the research program.
"Neither logical proof of inconsistency, nor a verdict of scientists about an experimentally discovered anomaly can destroy the research program with one blow."
Those. in contrast to Popper's hypotheses, struck by criticism or the experiment "to death", Lakatos "programs" not only live long, but also die a long and painful death, as the protective belt is sacrificed to preserve the core.
A research program succeeds if it successfully solves problems, and it fails if it fails to solve those problems.
As part of a successfully developing program, it is possible to develop more and more perfect theories "that explain more and more more facts.
This is why scientists tend to be sustainable positive work within the framework of such programs and admit a certain dogmatism in relation to their fundamental principles. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Over time, the heuristic power of the program begins to wane, and scientists face the question of whether it is worth continuing to work within its framework.
Lakatos believes that scientists can rationally assess the possibilities of the program and decide whether to continue or refuse to participate in it (in contrast to Kuhn, for whom such a decision is an irrational act of faith). For this, he proposes the following criterion for the rational assessment of the "progress" and "degeneration" of the program.
A program consisting of a sequence of theories T1, T2 ... Tn-1, Tn progresses if:
Tn explains all the facts that Tn-1 has successfully explained;
Tn covers a larger empirical area than the previous theory of Tn-1;
Some of the predictions from this additional empirical content
Tn is confirmed.
Those. in a progressively developing program, each successive theory must successfully predict additional facts.
If new theories are not able to successfully predict new facts, then the program is "stagnant" or "degenerate". Typically, such a program will only retroactively interpret the facts that have been discovered by other, more successful programs.
Based on this criterion, scientists can determine whether their program is progressing or not. If it progresses, then it will rationally adhere to it; if it degenerates, then the rational behavior of the scientist will be an attempt to develop a new program or the transition to the position of an already existing and progressive alternative program. But at the same time, Lakatos says that “a newly emerged research program should not be curtailed just because it has not been able to overcome a stronger rival program ... Until the new program is rationally reconstructed as a progressive self-movement of the problem, for a certain time it needs support from a stronger and more established rival program. "
In this way, main value programs - its ability to replenish knowledge, predict new facts. Contradictions and difficulties in explaining any phenomena - as I. Lakatos believes - do not significantly affect the attitude of scientists towards her.
In the geometry of Euclid, for two thousand years, it was not possible to solve the problem of the fifth postulate.
For many decades, the calculus of the infinitesimal, the theory of probability, and the theory of sets developed on a very contradictory basis.
It is known that Newton could not explain the stability of the solar system on the basis of mechanics and argued that God corrects deviations in the motion of the planets caused by various kinds of disturbances.
Despite the fact that such an explanation did not satisfy anyone at all, except, perhaps, Newton himself, who was, as you know, a very religious person (he believed that his research in theology was no less significant than in mathematics and mechanics), celestial mechanics generally developed successfully. Laplace managed to solve this problem only at the beginning of the 19th century.
Another classic example.
Darwin could not explain the so-called "Jenkins nightmare", and nevertheless his theory developed successfully. It is known that the Darwinian theory is based on three factors: variability, heredity and selection. Any organism has variability in an undirected manner. Because of this, variability in only a small number of cases can be favorable for the adaptation of a given organism to the environment. Some variability is not inherited, some is inherited.
Inherited variability is of evolutionary importance. According to Darwin, organisms that inherit these kinds of changes that give them a greater opportunity to adapt to their environment have a great opportunity for the future. Such organisms survive better and become the basis for a new step in evolution.
For Darwin, the laws of inheritance - how variability is inherited - were critical. In his concept of inheritance, he proceeded from the idea that inheritance is carried out in a continuous manner.
Imagine that a white man came to the African continent.
Signs of white, including "whiteness", will, according to Darwin, be transmitted as follows. If he marries a black woman, then their children will have half the blood "white". Since there is only one white on the continent, his children will marry blacks. But in this case, the proportion of "whiteness" will asymptotically decrease and eventually disappear. It cannot have an evolutionary significance.
Jenkins made this kind of reasoning. He drew attention to the fact that positive qualities that contribute to the adaptation of the body to the environment are extremely rare. And consequently, an organism that will have these qualities will certainly meet with an organism that will not have these qualities, and in subsequent generations the positive trait will dissipate.
Therefore, it cannot have evolutionary significance.
Darwin could not cope with this task in any way. It is no accident that this reasoning is called "Jenkins' nightmare." Darwin's theory also had other difficulties. And although the doctrine of Darwin was treated differently at different stages, Darwinism never died, it always had followers. As you know, the modern evolutionary concept - the synthetic theory of evolution - is based on Darwin's ideas, combined, however, with the Mendelian concept of discrete carriers of heredity, which eliminates the "Jenkins nightmare".
Within the framework of I. Lakatos's concept, the importance of the theory and the associated research program for the activities of a scientist becomes especially obvious. Outside of it, the scientist is simply not able to work. The main source of the development of science is not the interaction of theory and empirical data, but the competition of research programs in the matter of better describing and explaining the observed phenomena and, most importantly, predicting new facts.
Therefore, while studying the laws of the development of science, it is necessary to pay special attention to the formation, development and interaction of research programs.
I. Lakatos shows that a sufficiently rich scientific program can always be protected from any apparent inconsistency with empirical data.
I. Lakatos thinks in this style. Let us assume that we have calculated the trajectories of the planets on the basis of celestial mechanics. Using a telescope, we fix them and see that they differ from the calculated ones. Will a scientist say in this case that the laws of mechanics are wrong? Of course not. He won't even have such a thought. He will surely say that either the measurements are inaccurate or the calculations are wrong. He, finally, can admit the presence of another planet, which has not yet been observed, which causes the deviation of the planet's trajectory from the calculated one (this was in fact when Le Verrier and Adam discovered a new planet).
And let's say that in the place where they expected to see the planet, it would not have been. What would they say in this case? That the mechanics are wrong? No, that would not have happened. They probably would have come up with some other explanation for this situation.
These ideas are very important. They allow us to understand, on the one hand, how scientific concepts overcome the barriers that stand in their way, and on the other, why there are always alternative research programs.
We know that even when Einstein's theory of relativity entered the cultural context, anti-Einstein's theories continued to live.
Let us remember how genetics developed. Lamarckian ideas of the impact of the external environment on the body were defended despite the fact that there were a lot of facts that contradicted this.
A theoretically strong enough idea is always rich enough to be defended.
From the point of view of I. Lakatos, one can rationally adhere to a regressive program until it is overtaken by a competing program, and even after that. There is always hope that failure will be temporary. However, representatives of regressive programs will inevitably face ever-growing socio-psychological and economic problems.
Of course, no one forbids a scientist to develop the program that he likes. However, society will not support him.
"Editors scientific journals- writes I. Lakatos, - will refuse to publish their articles, which in general will contain either broadcast reformulations of their position, or a statement of counterexamples
(or even competing programs) through ad hoc linguistic tricks. Organizations that subsidize science will refuse funding ... "
"I am not suggesting," he notes, "that such decisions will necessarily be indisputable. In such cases, one should rely on common sense."
In his works, Lakatos shows that in the history of science there are very few periods when one program reigns supreme.
(paradigm) as Kuhn argued. There are usually several alternative research programs in any scientific discipline. So the history of the development of science, according to Lakatos, is the history of the struggle and change of competing research programs that compete on the basis of their heuristic power in explaining empirical facts, anticipating the development of science and taking countermeasures against the weakening of this power. The competition between them, mutual criticism, alternation of periods of prosperity and decline of programs give the development of science that real drama of scientific research, which is absent in Kuhn's monoparadigmatic "normal science".
Those. in fact, here I. Lakatos reproduces in different terms, in a more differentiated form, Kun's concept of the development of science on the basis of paradigms. However, when interpreting the driving reasons for the change in research programs, specific mechanisms for the development of science, Lakatos does not share the views
Kuhn. He sees internal and external history in science. The internal history of science is based on the movement of ideas, methodology, methods of scientific research, which, according to Lakatos, constitutes the own content of science. External history is the forms of organization of science and the personal factors of scientific research. Kuhn emphasized the enormous importance of these "external factors", while Lakatos gives them secondary importance.
So far, science is more like a battlefield for research programs than a system of isolated islands. "Mature science consists of research programs, not so much anticipating new facts, as looking for auxiliary theories, in this, in contrast to the crude" test-and-error "scheme, its heuristic power." Lakatos saw the weakness of the research programs of Marxism and Freudianism precisely in the underestimation of the role of auxiliary hypotheses, when the reflection of some facts was not accompanied by the anticipation of other unusual facts.
Imre Lakatos calls the research program of Marxism degenerate. "What new fact was predicted by Marxism, say, starting with
1917? " He calls the well-known predictions about the absolute impoverishment of the working class, about the coming revolution in the most developed industrial countries, about the absence of contradictions between the socialist countries as anti-scientific. The scandalous failure of such prophecies was explained by the Marxists by the dubious "theory of imperialism" (in order to make Russia
The "cradle" of the socialist revolution). There were "explanations" and Berlin
1953, and Budapest 1956, and Prague 1968, and the Russian-Chinese conflict.
Not to notice: if Newton's program led to the discovery of new facts, then Marx's theory remained behind the facts, giving explanations after events. And these, Lakatos notes, are symptoms of stagnation and degeneration. In 1979, John Warrol returned to this problem in his essay How Research Program Methodology Improves Popper's Methodology. Science, he stressed, is inherently dynamic: either it grows and remains a science, or it stops and disappears as a science. Marxism ceased to be a science as soon as it stopped growing.
So the concept of research programs by I. Lakatos can, as he himself demonstrates, be applied to the very methodology of science.
3. Formalism in science
I. Lakatos pays attention to the problem of scientific formalism. He touches on this problem in his book "Proofs and Refutations" and traces it on the basis of the philosophy of mathematics, as the closest direction of the philosophy of science.
The book of I. Lakatos is, as it were, a continuation of the book of G. Polya -
"Mathematics and Permissible Reasoning" (London, 1954). Having examined the questions concerning the emergence of a guess and its verification, Polya in his book stopped at the proof phase; I. Lakatos dedicated this book to the study of this phase.
I. Lakatos writes that in the history of thought it often happens that when a new powerful method appears, the study of problems that can be solved by this method quickly comes to the fore, while all the others are ignored, even forgotten, and the study of it is neglected.
He claims that this is what seems to have happened in our century in the field of the philosophy of mathematics as a result of its rapid development.
The subject of mathematics is such an abstraction of mathematics, when mathematical theories are replaced by formal systems, proofs - by some sequences of well-known formulas, definitions -
"shorthand expressions that are" unnecessary in theory, but typographically convenient. "
This abstraction was invented by Hilbert in order to obtain a powerful technique for investigating problems in the methodology of mathematics. But along with that I.
Lakatos notes that there are problems that fall outside the scope of mathematical abstraction. These include all tasks related to
"meaningful" mathematics and its development, and all problems related to situational logic and solving mathematical problems. The term "situational logic" belongs to Popper. This term denotes productive logic, the logic of mathematical creativity.
The school of mathematical philosophy, which strives to identify mathematics with its mathematical abstraction (and the philosophy of mathematics - with metamathematics), I. Lakatos calls the "formalist" school. One of the clearest characteristics of the formalist position is found in Carnap. Carnap demands that: a) philosophy should be replaced by the logic of science ..., but b) the logic of science is nothing more than the logical syntax of the language of science ..., c) mathematics is the syntax of a mathematical language.
Those. the philosophy of mathematics should be replaced by metamathematics.
According to I. Lakatos, formalism separates the history of mathematics from the philosophy of mathematics; in fact, the history of mathematics does not exist.
Any formalist should agree with Russell's remark that Boole's Laws of Thought (Boole, 1854) was "the first book ever written in mathematics. Formalism denies the status of mathematics for much of what was commonly understood to be part of mathematics, and nothing cannot say about its “development.” “None of the“ critical ”periods of mathematical theories can be admitted into the formalistic sky, where mathematical theories are like seraphim, cleansed of all the spots of earthly uncertainty.
However, formalists usually leave a small back door open for fallen angels; if for some "mixtures of mathematics and something else" it turns out to be possible to construct formal systems "which in a certain sense include them", then they can then be admitted. "
According to I. Lakatos, under such conditions, Newton would have to wait four centuries until Peano, Russell and Quine helped him climb into heaven, formalizing his infinitesimal calculus. Dirac was happier: Schwartz saved his soul during his lifetime. Here I. Lakatos mentions a paradoxical difficulty of a mathematician: by formalist or even deductive standards, he is not an honest mathematician. Dieudonné speaks of "the absolute necessity for every mathematician who cares about intellectual honesty to present their reasoning in an axiomatic form."
Under the modern dominance of formalism, I. Lakatos paraphrases Kant: the history of mathematics, having lost the leadership of philosophy, has become blind, while the philosophy of mathematics, turning its back on the most intriguing events in the history of mathematics, has become empty.
For Lakatos, "formalism" provides the strength of logical positivist philosophy. If we follow logical positivism, then the statement makes sense only if it is "tautological" or empirical. Since meaningful mathematics is neither
"tautological" or empirical, then it must be meaningless, it is pure nonsense. Here he starts from Türkett, who, in an argument with Kopi, argues that Gödel's propositions are meaningless. Kopi believes that these provisions are "a priori truths", but not analytical, then they refute the analytical theory of a priori. Lakatos noted that none of them notice that the special status of Gödel's statements from this point of view is that these theorems are theorems of informal meaningful mathematics and that in fact they both discuss the status of informal mathematics in a particular case. Theories of informal mathematics are definitely guesses that can hardly be divided into a priori and a posteriori. So the dogmas of logical positivism are disastrous for the history and philosophy of mathematics.
I. Lakatos in the expression methodology of science, uses the word
"methodology" in a sense close to the "heuristics" of Polya and Bernays and to the "logic of discovery" or "situational logic" of Popper. The withdrawal of the term "methodology of mathematics" for use as a synonym for "metamathematics" has a formalistic flavor. This shows that in the formalist philosophy of mathematics there is no real place for methodology as the logic of discovery.
Formalists believe that mathematics is the same as formalized mathematics.
He argues that two sets of things can be discovered in formalized theory:
1. you can open a solution to problems that a Turing machine (it is a finite list of rules or a final description of a procedure in our intuitive understanding of the algorithm) with a suitable program can solve in a finite time. But no mathematician is interested in following this boring mechanical "method" prescribed by the procedures for such a decision.
2. it is possible to find solutions to problems like: will be a theorem or not a certain formula of the theory, in which the possibility of a final solution is not established, where one can only be guided by the "method" of uncontrollable intuition and luck.
According to I. Lakatos, this gloomy alternative to machine rationalism and irrational blind guessing is unsuitable for living mathematics.
The researcher of informal mathematics provides creative mathematicians with a rich situational logic that is neither mechanical nor irrational, but which in no way can gain the recognition and encouragement of formalist philosophy.
Nevertheless, he admits that the history of mathematics and the logic of mathematical discovery, i.e. phylogeny and ontogeny of mathematical thought cannot be developed without criticism and the final rejection of formalism.
The formalistic philosophy of mathematics has very deep roots. She presents last link in a long chain of dogmatic philosophies of mathematics. For more than two thousand years there has been a dispute between dogmatists and skeptics.
Dogmatists argue that by the power of our human intellect and feelings, or just feelings alone, we can reach the truth and know that we have achieved it. Skeptics argue that we absolutely cannot reach the truth, or that if we can even achieve it, we will not be able to know that we have achieved it.
In this debate, mathematics was the proud fortress of dogmatism. Most of the skeptics have tried on the inaccessibility of this fortress of the dogma theory of knowledge. I. Lakatos claims that it has long been necessary to challenge this.
Thus, the goal of this book by I. Lakatos is to challenge the mathematical formalism.
4. The activities of the scientist in revolutionary
and inter-revolutionary periods of science
On the issue of the scientist's activities in revolutionary and inter-revolutionary periods, Lakatos expresses such an understanding of cumulative periods, when in the interpretation scientific theories we proceed from the premise that in the course of a revolution a theory does not appear in a fully completed form.
Unlike Kuhn, Lakatos does not believe that the research program that emerged during the revolution is complete and well-formed. The continuity of scientific research in the post-revolutionary period is formed, according to Lakatos, from the still unclear at the beginning of the research program, vaguely looming in the future.
The program acts as a project for further research and as a project for its own development and finalization. As long as this improvement of the research program continues,
Lakatos speaks of its progressive development. Progressive development ends at a certain "saturation point", after which regression begins. Positive program heuristics identify problems to be solved and predict anomalies and turn them into confirmatory examples. If Kuhn's anomalies are something external to the paradigm and their occurrence for the paradigm is accidental, then in the concept
Lakatos anomalies are predicted by the program and are internal to research activities.
A very important feature of the progressive development of the program, Lakatos considers the ability of the program to predict empirical facts (including those that can cause an anomaly). When the program begins to explain facts in hindsight, this means the beginning of its regressive development, the power of the program begins to dry out.
Even the most progressive research programs can explain their counterexamples, or anomalies, only gradually. The work of a theorist is determined by a long-term research program that predicts possible refutations of the program itself.
Development, improvement of the program in the post-revolutionary period is a necessary condition for scientific progress.
Lakatos recalls Newton, who despised those people who, like
Guku, got stuck on the first naive model and did not have the tenacity and ability to develop it into a research program, thinking that the first version already constituted a "discovery".
According to the very original idea of \u200b\u200bLakatos, the activity of a scientist in the inter-revolutionary periods is of a creative nature.
How the originally stated guess develops, transforms, changes, perfects, Lakatos revealed in his book "Proofs and Refutations".
Even in the course of proving, substantiating the knowledge gained in the course of the last more or less significant revolution, this knowledge is transformed, because, Lakatos believes, "a person never proves what he intends to prove." Moreover, the purpose of logical proof, Lakatos argues, is not to attain unconditional faith, but to generate doubt.
According to Kuhn, more and more confirmation of the paradigm, obtained in the course of solving the next puzzle problems, strengthens unconditional faith in the paradigm - the faith on which all normal activities of the members of the scientific community are based.
For Lakatos, the procedure for proving the truth of the original version of the research program leads not to belief in it, but to doubt, gives rise to the need to rebuild, improve, and make explicit the possibilities hidden in it. In his book, Lakatos analyzes how the growth of knowledge is carried out through a series of proofs and refutations, as a result of which the very initial premises of the discussion are changed and what is not originally intended to be proved is proved.
In Lakatos, unlike Kuhn, revolutionary research activities are not the direct opposite of the activities of a scientist in inter-revolutionary periods. This is primarily due to the understanding of the scientific revolution.
Since in the course of the revolution only the initial draft of a new research program is created, the work on its final creation is distributed over the entire post-revolutionary period.
List of sources used
1. Gubin V.D. and other Philosophy. - M .; 1997 .-- 432s.
2. Rakitov A.I. Philosophical problems of science. - M .; 1977 .-- 270s.
3. Giovanni Reale, Dario Antiseri. Western philosophy from the beginnings to the present day. Part 4 - L .; 1997.
4. Philosophy and methodology of science. Part 1. - M .; 1994 .-- 304s.
5. Philosophy and methodology of science. Part 2. - M .; 1994 .-- 200s.
6. Imre Lakatos. Evidence and refutation. - M .; 1967 .-- 152s.
7. Radugin A.A. Philosophy. Lecture course. - M .; 1995 .-- 304s.
Rakitov A.I. Philosophy. Basic ideas and principles. - M .; 1985.-368s.
Sokolov A.N. The subject of philosophy and the foundation of science. - S.P .; 1993 .-- 160s.
Lakatos I. Falsification and methodology of scientific research programs. -
M .; 1995.
Lakatos I. History of Science and Its Rational Reconstruction. - M .; 1978.-
235s.
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Lakatos (1922-1974) is the third surname of this scientist. During World War II, he was forced to change the Jewish surname Lipschitz to the Hungarian one Molnar, and later took the surname Lakatos. In 1947 the Hungarian scientist was arrested on charges of revisionism and sentenced to three years in the camps. In 1956, he emigrated to Austria and then to Great Britain, where from 1960 he worked at the Department of Philosophy at the London School of Economics. There Imre Lakatos met K. Popper, whose ideas he successfully developed and modernized in his philosophical and methodological works.
According to the philosopher himself, his theory of research programs is a modernized version of K. Popper's falsificationism (I. Lakatos calls his research program methodology "refined falsificationism"). Just like Popper, Lakatos considers the development of science from the point of view of the logic of science, that is, he recognizes the main "engine" as internal (rational in nature) factors, rejecting Coon's statement about the decisive role of socio-psychological factors.
I. Lakatos regards not a theory as a functional unit of scientific knowledge, but a number of interrelated theories that continue each other. This sequence is called a research program. I. Lakatos bases his understanding of the criteria of scientific character on the concept of theoretical progress. Scientific may not be a separate theory, but a research program - provided that it has the ability to predict new facts. The ability of a program to predict new facts I. Lakatos calls it heuristic power. The program achieves theoretical progress if, as a result of its application, it becomes possible to expand the empirical content, that is, to predict new facts. If the application of the program leads to the actual discovery of the predicted facts, then there is also empirical progress. Otherwise, if with an increase in the number of theories there is no increase in the explained facts, we are dealing with a regressive shift in the research program.
The development of a research program is governed by two main groups of methodological rules: some of them describe the methods that must be avoided (negative heuristic), others indicate the most desirable ways of research (positive heuristic).
The main rule of negative heuristics establishes a list of basic hypotheses ("hard core") that cannot be questioned within the framework of a given program. The hard core of the program is, in fact, the prism through which scientific facts are viewed.
The hard core can be abandoned only if the program can no longer predict previously unknown facts, that is, if it becomes theoretically regressive; the hard core dies off only together with the program itself.
A positive heuristic consists of secondary arguments and assumptions that are needed to refine and modify the program. These arguments form the "protective belt" of the program, since they adapt it to a specific empirical reality - this is how those facts are explained.
you (anomalies) who can refute the assertions included in the "core" that they are transformed from anomalies into another confirmation of the program.
A positive heuristic lies in the construction of models (according to I. Lakatos' definition, “a model is a set of boundary conditions (possibly together with some 'observational' theories), about which it is known that they must be replaced in the course of further development of the program.” Theories and the techniques included in the "protective belt" are not fixed once and for all and can be accepted and discarded depending on how well they perform their adaptive function.
I. Lakatos gives the following example: if an astronomer, who works within the framework of Newtonian theoretical mechanics, has calculated the trajectory of a certain newly discovered planet, and if observations of it show that the planet is not moving along this trajectory at all, the astronomer will not conclude that his observations disprove Newton's theory - this is prohibited by the rules of negative heuristics, Newton's theory is part of the rigid core and cannot disappear from the system without destroying it. Most likely, our hero will try to explain the behavior of the planet by some unaccounted for factors, for example, by the presence of another planet, whose gravity affects the movement of the first. This is a manifestation of a positive heuristic.
The same example can be used to clarify the concept of theoretical progress. It will take place if scientists really discover a hypothetical second planet - it turns out that the research program was able to predict the discovery of a new fact. If the planet is not found, the next adaptive hypotheses will come into play. They can argue, for example, that the planet is hidden by a cloud of cosmic dust, that it cannot be seen with a modern telescope, etc. If these hypotheses are ultimately untenable, then we are dealing with a regressive shift in the research program.
The elimination of a research program, according to I. Lakatos, occurs not because of the appearance of facts that contradict this theory (as K. Popper believed), but because of its inability to explain and turn into its confirmation (in other words, the theory exhausts its heuristic force). Such a program can easily be superseded by another, which could explain the anomalies that its predecessor was powerless against. In addition, the new program should explain the uncontested content of the previous one. The repression of scientific theory, according to Lakatos, does not occur immediately after the fatal anomaly is revealed - there is no question of any falsification until a better program appears.
L. R. Khamzina
Imre Lakatos (more correctly Lakatos, Hungarian Imre Lakatos, real name Lipschitz, Lipsitz; Debrecen, November 9, 1922 - London, February 2, 1974) - English philosopher of science of Hungarian origin.
Born in Hungary, student of Gyorgy Lukacs. During World War II, he was a member of the anti-fascist Resistance. At the same time, due to the beginning of the persecution of Jews (his mother and grandmother died in Auschwitz), he was forced to change his last name to Lakatos (the same name was borne by Prime Minister Geza Lakatos, who opposed the extermination of Hungarian Jews). There is another point of view, according to which he accepted the "proletarian" surname Lakatos (Joiner) when he got a job in the government of the Hungarian People's Republic.
After the war, he studied at the graduate school of Moscow University under the guidance of S. A. Yanovskaya. For a short time he was a functionary of the Ministry of Education of communist Hungary. During this time he was strongly influenced by the ideas of his compatriots Gyorgy Lukacs, Gyorgy Poya and Sandor Karachon. During the Rakosi personality cult in 1950-1953. was unlawfully repressed as a "revisionist" and was imprisoned. During the Hungarian Revolution on November 25, 1956, he fled to the West through Austria. Since 1958 he has lived permanently in Great Britain, since 1969 - professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He died in 1974 at the age of 51 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Lakatos is the author of the theory and methodology of research programs, in the framework of which, following Karl Popper, he developed the principle of falsification to the extent that he called refined falsificationism. The theory of Lakatos is aimed at studying the driving factors of the development of science, it continues and at the same time disputes the methodological concept of K. Popper, argues with the theory of Thomas Kuhn.
Lakatos described science as a competitive struggle between "research programs" consisting of a "hard core" of fundamental assumptions a priori accepted in the system, which cannot be refuted within the program, and a "safety belt" of ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses, mutating and adapting to counter-examples of the program. The evolution of a specific program occurs due to the modification and clarification of the "safety belt", while the destruction of the "hard core" theoretically means the abolition of the program and its replacement with another competing one.
The main criterion for the scientific nature of the program, Lakatos calls the growth of factual knowledge due to its predictive power. As long as the program provides an increase in knowledge, the work of a scientist within its framework is “rational”. When the program loses its predictive power and begins to work only for the "belt" of auxiliary hypotheses, Lakatos prescribes to abandon its further development. However, it is pointed out that in some cases the research program is experiencing its own internal crisis and again yields scientific results; thus, the scientist's “loyalty” to the chosen program even in times of crisis is recognized by Lakatos as “rational”.
The method of rational reconstruction of the history of science was applied by Lakatos in his book Proofs and Refutations to the history of proofs of the Descartes-Euler-Cauchy theorem on the relationship between the number of vertices, edges and faces of an arbitrary polyhedron. At the same time, in footnotes, Lakatos gives a broader picture of the history of mathematics, especially the history of mathematical analysis and programs for the substantiation of mathematics in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book itself was written not in the form of a historical study, but in the form of a school dialogue. Using the dialogical method, Lakatos artificially constructs a problematic situation in which the formation of the concept of "Euler polyhedron" takes place. Rational reconstruction in Lakatos does not reproduce all the details of real history, but is created specifically for the purpose of rationalizing the development of scientific knowledge.
LAKATOS
LAKATOS
(Lakatos) Imre (1922-1974) - British and science historian. Rod. in Hungary. During the Second World War he participated in the anti-fascist Resistance movement. During the fascist dictatorship, Horthy changed his real surname (Lipschitz) to Molnar (Melnik), and after the communists came to power, to Lakatosh (Joiner). At Moscow University, under the guidance of prof. S.A. Yanovskaya worked on his Ph.D. thesis in philosophy of mathematics. IN . 1940s was accused of "revisionism" and spent more than three years in prison. After the 1956 uprising, he emigrated from Hungary to Austria, then left for Great Britain (1958). From 1960 he taught at the London School of Economics, became a student and follower of K. Popper. He made major contributions to the philosophy and methodology of critical rationalism.
L. proposed an original version of the logic of conjectures and refutations, applying it as a rational reconstruction of the growth of scientific knowledge in meaningful "quasi-empirical" mathematics of the 17th and 19th centuries. From his point of view, "does not develop as a monotonous increase in the number of undoubtedly proven theorems, but only through the continuous improvement of conjectures through reflection and criticism, through the logic of proofs and refutations." Later he came to the conclusion that this could be revised taking into account its possible application to other fields of scientific knowledge, in particular to the analysis of the development of theoretical physics. As a result, he managed to create a more universal concept of the growth of "mature" science - the methodology of research programs, where the result of repeated attempts by researchers to verify and falsify the tested scientific theory is a continuous improvement of its original content with the help of additional hypotheses.
L. attached particular to the creation of models for the development of scientific and theoretical knowledge to the study of the history of science. Methodological, carried out in order to identify the scientific nature of a particular research program, breaks down, in his opinion, into the following stages: promotion of rational reconstruction; it with the real history of the corresponding science, as well as rational reconstruction for the absence of historicity and actual history - for the absence of rationality. In his recent works, L. proposed a “normative-historiographic version” of the methodology of scientific research programs as a general theory for comparing the competing logics of scientific research, where “real” science can be regarded as a “touchstone” of its rational reconstructions.
Although L. did not manage to adequately reconcile the logical-normative of his reconstruction with the real variety of processes of the growth of scientific knowledge, his research programs represent one of the brightest achievements of modern philosophy and methodology of science. Always remaining a consistent supporter of philosophy. rationalism, he defended the position of this direction in the intense polemics of the 1960-1970s. with T. Kuhn, P. Feyerabend and a number of other philosophers of science.
Philosophy: Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M .: Gardariki. Edited by A.A. Ivina. 2004 .
LAKATOS
L a k a t o sh (Lakatos) Imre (9.11.1922, Budapest, - 2.2.1974, London), english historian of science, representative t. n. methodological. falsificationism - directions to Anglo-Amer. philosophy of science, focused on the study of the laws of development scientific. knowledge. Since 1958 in Great Britain. Influenced by the ideas of K. Popper and D. Poya. I saw the goal of my research in the logical and normative reconstruction of the processes of changing knowledge and building the logic of development scientific. theories based on a careful study of real empiricism. history of science. Originally proposed his own version of the logic of deductive thought experiment, applying it as a rational reconstruction of the development of finite mathematics 17-19 centuries After revising later the original methodological. installation, L. developed a universal. logical and normative reconstruction of the development of science - the methodology of scientific research. programs. L.'s methodology considers the growth of "mature" (developed) science as a change in a number of continuously related theories. This is due to the regulatory rules of research. programs prescribing which paths are most promising for further research ("Positive")and which paths to avoid ("Negative heuristic")... Other structural studies programs - "hard core" (it includes conditionally irrefutable fundamental assumptions of the program) and a "protective belt" consisting of auxiliary. hypotheses (it ensures the safety of the "hard core" from refutations and can be modified, partially or completely replaced when faced with counterexamples)... According to L., in development they will investigate. programs can be divided into two main stages - progressive and degenerate. At the progressive stage, “put down. heuristics "actively stimulates the advancement of hypotheses that expand the empirical. and theoretical. ... However, further development will be investigated. the program slows down sharply, it will "put down. heuristic ”loses heuristic. power, resulting in increased ad hoc hypotheses (i.e. related only to this case).
Having overcome the shortcomings inherent in the concepts of the development of knowledge by Popper and Kuhn, L. at the same time was unable to reconcile the logical-normative nature of his concept with the real complexity and variety of processes of change and development scientific. knowledge. His methodology cannot claim universality: as a productive historical scientific. research it applies only to strictly defined. periods of development of science.
Falsification and the methodology ot scientific research programs, in book: Criticism and the growth oi knowledge, Camb., 1970; in russian per.- Proofs and refutations, M., 1967; History of science and its rational, reconstruction, in sat.: The structure and development of science,?., 1978.
Shvyrev V.S., Analysis scientific. knowledge? modern "Philosophy of science", "VF", 1971, no. 2; M a m h y? ?. ?., The problem of choosing a theory, M., 1975; Gryaznoe B.S., Sadovskiy V.N., Problems of the structure and development of science in "Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science", in sat.: Structure and development of science, M., 1978, from. 5-39.
Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia. Ch. edition: L.F.Ilyichev, P.N.Fedoseev, S.M.Kovalev, V.G. Panov. 1983 .
LAKATOS
LAKATOS, Lakatos Imre (November 9, 1922, Budapest - February 2, 1974, London) - Hungarian philosopher and methodologist of science, one of the most prominent representatives of "critical rationalism". In 1956 he emigrated from Hungary to Austria, then to England. He taught at Cambridge, since 1960 - at the London School of Economics, where he became close to K. Popper. Lakatos filled falsificationism with a new content as a methodological basis for the theory of scientific rationality. According to this principle, scientific activities is confirmed by the readiness of the scientist to recognize that any scientific hypothesis has been refuted when it encounters a contradicting experience (not only to recognize, but also to strive for possible refutation of its own hypotheses). Falsificationism combined the postulates of empiricism and rationality: rationality is based on the universalization of empiricism, and is adequately embodied in the criterion of rationality. Lakatos extended this to the field of developing mathematics. In terms of its rational structure, the path of scientific research in mathematics is the same as in empirical natural science: the discovered “counterexamples” force the researcher to modify the hypotheses put forward, improve the proofs, use the heuristic potential of the accepted assumptions, or put forward new ones. However, in mathematics and in empirical science, the rationality of criticism does not mean the requirement to immediately reject the refuted hypotheses. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the behavior of a researcher includes a number of intellectual strategies, the meaning of which is to go forward without stopping due to individual failures, if it promises new successes and these promises come true. This is evidenced by the history of science, which thereby enters into dogmatic falsificationism. Lakatos attempted to combine a historical approach to science with the preservation of a rationalistic attitude. This was expressed in the methodological concept of "refined falsificationism" developed by him, which is more often called the methodology of research programs. The rational development of science is presented in this concept as a rivalry of “conceptual systems”, the elements of which can be not only separate concepts and judgments, but also complex complexes of dynamically developing theories, research projects and their interconnections. Such systems are organized around some fundamental ideas that form the “hard core” of the research program (as these ideas are put forward by the intellectual leaders of science and are dogmatically assimilated by the scientific community). The methodological meaning of the “hard core” is revealed in the concept of “negative heuristics,” that is, restrictions on refutation procedures: if it encounters refuting facts, then the statements that are included in the “hard core” are not discarded; instead, scientists are clarifying whether they are developing existing ones or putting forward new “auxiliary hypotheses” that form a “protective belt” around the “hard core”. The task of the “safety belt” is to keep the creative potential of the research program, or its “positive heuristic”, intact for as long as possible. The function of the latter is to ensure the continuous growth of scientific knowledge, the deepening of its empirical content (more and more wider circles of phenomena, correction of shortcomings and errors of "refuting experiments"). The requirement to increase empirical content is, according to Lakatos, the main condition and criterion of scientific rationality: the researcher who chooses the optimal strategy to increase empirical knowledge acts rationally, any action is irrational or irrational. The research program methodology formulates the rules, the implementation of which will optimize this strategy. This is, for example, the rule that determines the "progressiveness" of a particular research program: "progressive shift of problems" is ensured by an increment of empirical content new theory in comparison with its competitors, i.e. an increase in predicting new, previously unknown facts, combined with empirical confirmation of these new facts. When this rule ceases to operate and begins to "mark time", doing Ch. about. “Self-justification”, that is, it removes anomalies with the help of ad hoc hypotheses, but does not give a steady increase in empirical content, we can say that the program has entered the stage of “degeneration” and should soon be replaced by a more productive program. These rules together form the theory of scientific rationality, which explores the growth of science as a change in scientific theories united by a common research program. Lakatos criticized attempts to “sociologize” epistemology, in which the connection between science and the history of culture was interpreted as a scientific and cognitive process, the content of scientific theories and methods, the processes of the emergence and development of conceptual systems from “extra-scientific” (psychological, socio-psychological, sociological) factors. He defended the idea of \u200b\u200b"rational reconstruction" of the history of science, not attaching special importance to the thesis about the "incommensurability of scientific theories" replacing one another in the course of scientific evolution, which was put forward as an argument against this idea by some philosophers (T. Kuhn, P. Feyerabend and etc.).
Lakatos was looking for a movement towards the history of science on the basis of rationalism. The methodology of “refined falsificationism” was supposed to answer the question: how are scientific research programs formed, changed and then “canceled”, that is, supplanted by competitors? In real historical and scientific situations, the factors of the formation and transformation of scientific knowledge are found among metaphysical ideas, and among religious beliefs, and among ideological or political orientations. Lakatos suggested taking such factors into account “on the margins” of rational reconstructions of the “internal” history of science and attributing them to deviations of the “external” history from the normal, that is, rationally reconstructed course of events. This gave some critics to accuse Lakatos of a lack of “historical flair” (S. Toulmin, K. Hübner, P. Feyerabend and others). In "rational reconstructions" some of the most important processes of scientific development were presented as "irrational". However, according to critics, this rather spoke about the narrowness of Lakatos' ideas about rationality than about some kind of “irrationalism” of real science. Nevertheless, Lakatos' methodology is the most important tool for the rational analysis of science, one of the most significant achievements of the methodology of science in the 20th century.
Cit .: Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic. - The Problem of Inductive Logic. L., 1968; The Changing Logic of Scientific Discovery. L .. 1973; Proofs and Refutations and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Mathematics. L .. 1974; Evidence and refutation. M., 1967; History of science and its rational reconstruction. - In the book: Structure i] paiBimic science. M., 1978; Endless and foundations of mathematics. - In the book: Modern. Reader. M .. 1994: Falsification and methodology of research programs. M .. 1995.
V. N. Poru with
New Encyclopedia of Philosophy: In 4 vols. M .: Thought. Edited by V.S.Stepin. 2001 .
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Lakatos, Imre Imre Lakatos Hung. Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos Date of birth ... Wikipedia
- (Lakatos) (real name Lipschitz) (Lakatos) Imre (1922 1974) Hungarian British philosopher and methodologist of science, a student of Popper. Originally from Hungary, a member of the anti-fascist resistance, after the establishment of the communist regime in Hungary ... ... History of Philosophy: An Encyclopedia
- (Lakatos) Imre (1922 1974) British philosopher of Hungarian origin. He was engaged in the problem of adequate reconstruction and description of the empirical history of science and its laws by creating a normative methodology within the framework of the philosophy of science. In his ... The latest philosophical dictionary
Lakatos, Imre Imre Lakatos (in Hungarian Lakatos Hungarian Imre Lakatos, real name and surname Avrum Lipschitz; November 9, 1922, Debrecen February 2, 1974, London) English philosopher of science of Hungarian origin. Contents 1 Biography ... Wikipedia
November 9, 1922, Budapest - February 2, 1974, London) - Hungarian philosopher and methodologist of science, one of the most prominent representatives of "critical rationalism". In 1956 he emigrated from Hungary to Austria, then to England. He taught at Cambridge, since 1960 - at the London School of Economics, where he became close to K. Popper. Lakatos filled the principle of falsificationism with new content as a methodological basis for the theory of scientific rationality. According to this principle, the rationality of scientific activity is confirmed by the readiness of a scientist to recognize that any scientific hypothesis is refuted when it encounters a conflicting experience (not only to recognize, but also to strive for possible refutation of his own hypotheses). Falsificationism combined the postulates of empiricism and rationality: rationality is based on the universalization of empiricism, and empiricism is adequately embodied in the criterion of rationality. Lakatos extended this connection to the field of developing mathematics. In terms of its rational structure, the path of scientific research in mathematics is the same as in empirical natural science: the discovered "counterexamples" force the researcher to modify the hypotheses put forward, improve the proofs, use the heuristic potential of the accepted assumptions, or put forward new ones. However, in both mathematics and empirical science, the rationality of criticism does not mean the requirement to immediately reject the refuted hypotheses. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the rational behavior of a researcher includes a number of intellectual strategies, the general meaning of which is to move forward without stopping due to individual failures, if the movement promises new successes and these promises come true. This is evidenced by the history of science, which thereby comes into conflict with dogmatic falsificationism. Lakatos attempted to combine a historical approach to science with the preservation of a rationalistic attitude. This was reflected in the methodological concept of "refined falsificationism" developed by him, which is more often called the methodology of research programs. The rational development of science is presented in this concept as a rivalry of "conceptual systems", the elements of which can be not only individual concepts and judgments, but also complex complexes of dynamically developing theories, research projects and their interconnections. Such systems are organized around some fundamental ideas that form the "hard core" of the research program (as a rule, these ideas are put forward by the intellectual leaders of science and are dogmatically assimilated by the scientific community). The methodological meaning of the “hard core” is revealed in the concept of “negative heuristics,” that is, restrictions on refutation procedures: if a theory encounters refuting facts, then the statements that are part of the “hard core” are not discarded; instead, scientists are clarifying whether they are developing existing ones or putting forward new “auxiliary hypotheses” that form a “protective belt” around the “hard core”. The task of the "safety belt" is to keep the creative potential of the research program, or its "positive heuristic", intact for as long as possible. The function of the latter is to ensure the continuous growth of scientific knowledge, the deepening of its empirical content (explanation of an ever wider range of phenomena, correction of shortcomings and errors of "refuting experiments"). The requirement to increase the empirical content is, according to Lakatos, the main condition and criterion of scientific rationality: the researcher who chooses the optimal strategy to increase empirical knowledge acts rationally, any other action is irrational or irrational. The research program methodology formulates the rules, the implementation of which will optimize this strategy. This is, for example, the rule that determines the "progressiveness" of one or another research program: the "progressive shift of problems" is ensured by an increase in the empirical content of a new theory in comparison with its competitors, that is, an increase in the ability to predict new, previously unknown facts in combined with empirical confirmation of these new facts. When this rule ceases to apply and the research program begins to "mark time", dealing with Ch. about. “Self-justification”, that is, it removes anomalies with the help of ad hoc hypotheses, but does not give a steady increase in empirical content, we can say that the program has entered the stage of “degeneration” and should soon be replaced by another, more productive program. These rules together form the theory of scientific rationality, which explores the growth of science as a change in scientific theories united by a common research program. Lakatos criticized attempts to "sociologize" epistemology, in which the connection between science and the history of culture was interpreted as the dependence of the scientific and cognitive process, the content of scientific theories and methods, the processes of the emergence and development of conceptual systems on "extrascientific" (psychological, socio-psychological, sociological) factors. He defended the idea of \u200b\u200b"rational reconstruction" of the history of science, not attaching special importance to the thesis about the "incommensurability of scientific theories" replacing one another in the course of scientific evolution, which was put forward as an argument against this idea by some philosophers (T. Kuhn, P. Feyerabend and etc.).
Lakatos was looking for the possibility of moving towards the history of science on the basis of rationalism. The methodology of "refined falsificationism" was supposed to answer the question: how are scientific research programs formed, changed and then "canceled", that is, supplanted by competitors? In real historical and scientific situations, the factors of the formation and transformation of scientific knowledge are found among metaphysical ideas, and among religious beliefs, and among ideological or political orientations. Such factors Lakatos proposed to take into account "in the fields" of rational reconstructions of the "internal" history of science and to attribute them to deviations of the "external" history from the normal, that is, rationally reconstructed course of events. This gave rise to some critics for accusing Lakatos of a lack of "historical flair" (S. Toulmin, K. Hübner, P. Feyerabend and others). In "rational reconstructions" some of the most important processes of scientific development were presented as "irrational". However, according to critics, this rather spoke about the narrowness of Lakatos's ideas about rationality than about some kind of "irrationalism" of real science. Nevertheless, Lakatos' methodology is the most important tool for the rational analysis of science, one of the most significant achievements of the methodology of science in the 20th century.
Cit .: Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic. - The Problem of Inductive Logic. L., 1968; The Changing Logic of Scientific Discovery. L .. 1973; Proofs and Refutations and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Mathematics. L .. 1974; Evidence and refutation. M., 1967; History of science and its rational reconstruction. - In the book: Structure i] paiBimic science. M., 1978; Endless regression and foundations of mathematics. - In the book: Modern philosophy of science. Reader. M .. 1994: Falsification and methodology of research programs. M .. 1995.
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