Abstract
The aim of this paper is to bring out a major (philosophic) difference between the direction in which Lakatos and his followers are trying to develop Popper’s methodology of appraisal, and what I might call the ‘objective’ methodology of appraisal to which I subscribe.1
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Notes
See my article ‘Novel Predictions as a Criterion of Merit’ in Lakatos Memorial Volume (Cohen, Feyerabend, Wartofsky, Eds.) to be published in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.
Pace Feyerabend, we are concerned with theories that at least ‘overlap’ (if necessary, after suitable translation of the language of T2 into the language of T1).
Touching references to ‘design’ (implying abandonment of objectivity) in attempts to eliminate ‘ad-hocness’ in theories are found throughout the series of discussion of this point (H. R. Paneth: Science News 24, 169 (1952);
K. R. Popper: Conjectures and Refutations, 1963, p. 241;
E. Zahar: BJPS 24, 103 (1973)). Private correspondence may be an amusing source for the historian but references to it, or indeed to any (notoriously misleading) autobiographical sources, do not raise the methodology of appraisal back to the level of objectivity. 7 I do not hold that the condition is necessary since I believe that a theory may be preferred entirely on the grounds of linguistic simplicity. (See H. R. Post: ‘Simplicity in Scientific Theories’, BJPS XI, No. 41 (1960).)
Thus any activity in physics since 1935 can at best be described as normal science; that is providing it has been progressive at all!
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© 1978 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Post, H. (1978). Objectivism vs Sociologism. In: Radnitzky, G., Andersson, G. (eds) Progress and Rationality in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9866-7_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9866-7_14
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