Progress and Rationality in Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 58)

This collection of essays has evolved through the co-operative efforts, which began in the fall of 1974, of the participants in a workshop sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The idea of holding one or more small colloquia devoted to the topics of rational choice in science and scientific progress originated in a conversation in the summer of 1973 between one of the editors (GR) and the late Imre Lakatos. Unfortunately Lakatos himself was never able to see this project through, but his thought-provoking methodology of scientific research programmes was ably expounded and defended by his successors. Indeed, this volume continues and deepens the debate inaugurated in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave), a book which grew out of a conference held in 1965. That debate has continued during the years that have passed since that conference. The group of discussions about the place of rationality in science which have been held between those who emphasize the history of science (with Feyerabend and Kuhn as the most prominent exponents) and the critical rationalists (Popper and his followers), with Imre Lakatos defending a middle ground, these discussions were seen by almost all commentators as the most important event in the philosophy of science in the last decade. This problem area constituted the central theme of our Thyssen workshop. The workshop operated in the following manner. Front Matter....Pages i-x Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Objective Criteria of Scientific Progress? Inductivism, Falsificationism, and Relativism....Pages 3-19 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 The Popperian Approach to Scientific Knowledge....Pages 23-43 The Ways in which the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes Improves on Popper’s Methodology....Pages 45-70 ‘Crucial’ Experiments: A Case Study....Pages 71-97 The Objective Promise of a Research Programme....Pages 99-113 Front Matter....Pages 115-115 Popper vs Inductivism....Pages 117-142 In Defence of Aristotle: Comments on the Condition of Content Increase....Pages 143-180 Evidential Support, Falsification, Heuristics, and Anarchism....Pages 181-201 Science and the Search for Truth....Pages 203-220 Philosophy of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions....Pages 221-252 Towards a New Theory of Scientific Inquiry....Pages 253-278 Some Critical Comments on Current Popperianism on the Basis of a Theory of System Sets....Pages 279-289 The Problem of Verisimilitude....Pages 291-310 Objectivism vs Sociologism....Pages 311-318 Front Matter....Pages 319-319 Research Programmes, Empirical Support, and the Duhem Problem: Replies to Criticism....Pages 321-338 Corroboration and the Problem of Content-Comparison....Pages 339-378 Back Matter....Pages 379-388 Front Matter....Pages 385-385 The Gong Show — Popperian Style....Pages 387-392 Reply to Watkins’: Hübner on Falsification, “Grue” and Truth’....Pages 393-396 Back Matter....Pages 397-427