Progress and Rationality in Science

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Objective Criteria of Scientific Progress? Inductivism, Falsificationism, and Relativism

      • Gerard Radnitzky, Gunnar Andersson

      Pages 3-19

3. The LSE Position

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

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   2. The Popperian Approach to Scientific Knowledge

      • John Watkins

      Pages 23-43

   3. The Ways in which the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes Improves on Popper’s Methodology

      • John Worrall

      Pages 45-70

   4. ‘Crucial’ Experiments: A Case Study

      • Elie Zahar

      Pages 71-97

   5. The Objective Promise of a Research Programme

      • Peter Urbach

      Pages 99-113

4. Reflections on the LSE Position

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 115-115

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   2. Popper vs Inductivism

      • Adolf Grünbaum

      Pages 117-142

   3. In Defence of Aristotle: Comments on the Condition of Content Increase

      • Paul Feyerabend

      Pages 143-180

   4. Evidential Support, Falsification, Heuristics, and Anarchism

      • Alan Musgrave

      Pages 181-201

   5. Science and the Search for Truth

      • Hans Albert

      Pages 203-220

   6. Philosophy of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions

      • Ernán McMullin

      Pages 221-252

   7. Towards a New Theory of Scientific Inquiry

      • Noretta Koertge

      Pages 253-278

   8. Some Critical Comments on Current Popperianism on the Basis of a Theory of System Sets

      • Kurt Hübner

      Pages 279-289

   9. The Problem of Verisimilitude

      • Gunnar Andersson

      Pages 291-310

   10. Objectivism vs Sociologism

       • Heinz Post

       Pages 311-318

5. The LSE Reply

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 319-319

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   2. Research Programmes, Empirical Support, and the Duhem Problem: Replies to Criticism

      • John Worrall

      Pages 321-338

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.

• Karl R. Popper
• falsification
• philosophy of science
• relativism

• Universität Trier, Germany

  Gerard Radnitzky, Gunnar Andersson

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