Biography of Lakatos. Modern Western philosophy - lakatos (lakatos) imre. Major works of Lakatos

INTRODUCTION

Studying the patterns of development scientific knowledge, the British philosopher and historian of science Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) saw the goal of his research in the logical-normative reconstruction of the processes of changing knowledge and building the logic of the development of scientific theories based on the study of the real empirical history of science.

In his early works (of which the most famous is Proofs and Refutations), Lakatos proposed a variant of the logic of conjectures and refutations, applying it as a rational reconstruction of the development of knowledge in mathematics of the 17th-19th centuries. Already during this period, he clearly stated that “the dogmas of logical positivism are disastrous for the history and philosophy of mathematics... The history of mathematics and the logic of mathematical discovery, i. formalism".

Lakatos opposes the latter (as the essence of logical positivism) with a program of analysis of the development of meaningful mathematics, based on the unity of the logic of proofs and refutations. This analysis is nothing but a logical reconstruction of the real historical process of scientific knowledge. The line of analysis of the processes of change and development of knowledge is then continued by the philosopher in a series of his articles and monographs, which set out a universal concept of the development of science, based on the idea of competing research programs.

This essay will further discuss the main points of this concept. The purpose of this work is to highlight the main ideas of the philosophy of science of Imre Lakatos, as well as to study the patterns of growth of scientific knowledge, according to the ideas of Imre Lakatos.

1. MAIN IDEA OF THE RESEARCH PROGRAMS METHODOLOGY AND ITS PURPOSE

As a result of post-positivist critique, especially the historicist critique of Kuhn and Feyerabend, the "rationalists" have received a significant blow. “Earlier,” says W. Newton-Smith, “very little was said about non-rationalistic models of explaining changes in science...”, for rationalists reigned. Now the situation has changed dramatically. “How does our rationalist feel?” he asks. “Hunted, defeated and beaten for something he can hardly accept, he nevertheless survived.” W. Newton-Smith connects this survival with Popper's program of "moderate rationalism", continued by Lakatos, with a retreat from the classical understanding of truth in the direction of "approaching the truth", "increase in likelihood", and growth of "predictive power".

Thus, Lakatos repeatedly argues that theories are invented, and his criterion of "progressive problem shift" essentially introduces a constructivist criterion of efficiency in the selection of research programs. However, following Popper, he proclaims the belief that the truth exists and that scientific theories approach it based on experience, although we have no criteria by which we could argue that a given sequence of theories is moving towards truth.

The basic unit of Imre Lakatos's (1922–1974) model of science is the "research program" consisting of a "hard core" and a "protective belt". The model of science by I. Lakatos (as well as T. Kuhn's model) has two levels: the level of specific theories that form the changing "protective belt" of the "research program", and the level of the unchanging "hard core" that determines the face of the "research program". Different research programs have different "hard cores", i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between them.

The emergence of this model is due to the fact that Lakatos, on the one hand, is not satisfied with Kuhn's "reduction of the philosophy of science to the psychology of science." “From Kuhn’s point of view,” he says, “the change in scientific knowledge—from one “paradigm” to another—is a mystical transformation that has no and cannot have rules. This is a subject of psychology (perhaps social psychology) discoveries. (Such) a change in scientific knowledge is like a change in religious faith. Therefore, Kuhn's position he refers to irrationalism.

On the other hand, Lakatos supports the thesis of Kuhn and Feyerabend about the absence of "crucial experiments" as a criterion for choosing between theories. “There is nothing,” he says, “that could be called decisive experiments, at least if we understand by them such experiments that are capable of immediately overturning the research program. In fact, when one research program fails and is supplanted by another, one can - looking back carefully - call an experiment decisive if one can see in it a spectacular confirming example in favor of the winning program and obvious evidence of the failure of the program that has already been defeated "" Decisive experiments are recognized as such only decades later (retroactively)" "The status of a "crucial" experiment depends on the nature of the theoretical competition in which it is involved." Lakatos shows this with the example of the Michelson-Morley experiment and a number of others. He is also close to Kuhn's thesis that "the rejection of any paradigm without replacing it with another means the rejection of science in general" . “There can be no falsification before there is a better theory,” says Lakatos, [Lakatos, p. 307].

Therefore, Lakatos aims to develop the thesis of Popper's "critical rationalism" about the rationality of changes in scientific knowledge, "to get out of the shelling of Kuhn's criticism, and to consider scientific revolutions as a rationally constructed progress of knowledge, and not as a conversion to a new faith" . To do this, he develops his methodology of "research programs"

2. "LOGIC OF DISCOVERY" AND ITS FOUR FORMS

Lakatos distinguishes four different "logics of discovery": inductivism, conventionalism, methodological falsificationism (Popper), methodological research programs (Lakatos). After reviewing the features of these methodological concepts, he emphasizes that, “research programs are the greatest scientific achievements and they can be assessed on the basis of a progressive or regressive problem shift; while scientific revolutions consist in the fact that one research program (progressively) displaces another.

Speaking against a priori and anti-theoretical approaches to the methodology of science, Lakatos, in particular, notes that the wisdom of a scientific court and individual precedents cannot be accurately expressed by general laws formulated by a philosopher - be it F. Bacon, R. Carnap or K. Popper. The fact is that, in his opinion, science may well turn out to be “a violator of the rules of the scientific game” established by these and other philosophers. Therefore, firstly, a “pluralistic system of authorities” is needed, and, secondly, when developing methodological recommendations (which Lakatos distinguishes from methodological assessments), one should rely more heavily on the history of knowledge (philosophical and scientific) and its results.

Any scientific (rational) methodology is not an education closed in itself, but always, according to Lakatos, needs to be supplemented by a socio-psychological, "external history" - and in this broad context to be developed and function. This applies to any methodological concepts, and therefore the methodology of research programs must be supplemented by "empirical external history", that is, non-rational, socio-cultural factors. Their study is an important task for the sociology of knowledge and social psychology.

In this regard, Lakatos points out that representatives of these sciences must understand the fundamental scientific ideas, for "the sociology of knowledge often serves as a convenient screen behind which ignorance is hidden: most sociologists of knowledge do not understand and do not even want to understand these ideas."

3. RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ITS LIMITATIONS

The term " real story” in Lakatos coincides in essence with what can be expressed by the term “real empirical history of science”. He considers the latter in a broader context - within the framework of history as a science, which, from his point of view, is a theory and reconstruction of history as a set historical events and is evaluative.

Accordingly, for Lakatos, the history of science is the history of "scientific events" chosen and interpreted in some normative way. He presents the main steps, moments of this interpretation as follows: “(a) the philosophy of science develops a normative methodology, on the basis of which the historian reconstructs the “internal history” and thereby gives a rational explanation for the growth of objective knowledge; (c) two competing methodologies can be assessed using a normatively interpreted history; (c) any rational reconstruction of history needs to be supplemented by an empirical (social-psychological) "external history" .

Methodological analysis carried out in order to identify the scientific nature of a particular research program, breaks down, according to Lakatos, into the following stages: promotion of rational reconstruction; comparison of the latter with the actual (real, empirical) history of the corresponding science; criticism of rational reconstruction for the lack of historicity and the actual history of science for the lack of rationality.

An important methodological requirement, which must be observed in this case, is that "history without certain theoretical premises is impossible"; all histories - whether they like it or not - have some theoretical guidelines, which in a certain way direct the process of reconstructing science in its rational "dimension". However, this "dimension" for scientific activity and its results, although archival, is not the only one, because there is also a socio-cultural background.

In this regard, Lakatos introduces the concepts of "internal history" - rational reconstruction itself as such, and "external history" - everything non-rational, where the greatest (and main) interest is precisely "subjective factors" that fall out of the field of view of internal (rational) history. Since, in his opinion, the most important issues external history are determined by internal history, then the latter is primary.

The merit of Lakatos lies in the fact that he was quite clearly aware of the fact that the rational reconstruction of the history of science “cannot be exhaustive due to the fact that people are not completely rational beings, and even when they act rationally, they may have personal theories. about one's own rational actions. Explaining this statement of his, he points out that no set of human judgments is completely rational and therefore a rational reconstruction can never coincide with real history. Because of this circumstance, Lakatos notes that his historiographical research program cannot and should not explain the entire history of science as rational. Explaining this idea, he recalls that even eminent scientists take false steps and make mistakes in their judgments.

Beyond rational reconstructions, there is also an "ocean of anomalies" (subjective, value, etc.) where these reconstructions are immersed. But how can these "anomalies" be explained? According to Lakatos, this can be done in two ways: either with the help of a better rational reconstruction, or with the help of some "higher" empirical theory, i.e., with the help of socio-cultural factors in the development of science and their generalizing characteristics. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that "rationality works much more slowly than is commonly thought, and besides, it can be mistaken."

4. RESEARCH PROGRAM

"Research program" is the main concept of Lakatos' concept of science. She, in his opinion, is the main unit of development and evaluation of scientific knowledge. Under the research program, the philosopher understands a series of successive theories, united by a set of fundamental ideas and methodological principles. Any scientific theory must be evaluated together with its auxiliary hypotheses, initial conditions and, most importantly, along with the theories preceding it. Strictly speaking, the object of methodological analysis is not a single hypothesis or theory, but a series of theories, that is, a certain type of development.

In this program, the core stands out - the basic principles or laws and "protective belts" with which the core surrounds itself in cases of empirical difficulties (in the presence of contradictory data, Newton's laws are not refuted, but an additional theory is created that develops these laws). The theory is never falsified, but only replaced by another, more rational one. Research program: either progressive (if its theoretical growth is ahead of empirical growth - the performance of prognostic functions), or regressing (if theoretical development lags behind the empirical one; in this case, the first program replaces the second). In the concept of Lakatos, a certain global transpersonal process appears through the activity of a scientist, the nature of which is not revealed, but it is present, because if we ourselves are not able to make a choice, - Lakatos says, - then how is this choice of programs nevertheless carried out in the history of the development of science ?

Applying his method, the philosopher sought to show (and this was his main goal) that any methodological concept functions as a historiographical (or metahistorical) theory (or research program) and can be criticized through a critical examination of that rational historical reconstruction which she proposes.

In the realization of this goal, the main idea of the concept of Lakatos was embodied, which, according to him, “consists in the fact that my “methodology”, in contrast to the previous meanings of this term, only evaluates well-formed theories (or research programs) and does not intend to propose any means neither for developing good theories, nor even for choosing between two competing programs. My "methodological rules" justify the rationality of accepting Einstein's theory, but they do not force scientists to work with Einstein's research program rather than Newton's. Thus, the concept of Lakatos only evaluates the totality of theories (research programs) in their formed “finished” form, but not the very mechanism of their formation and development. Knowledge of this mechanism "remains in the shadows", it is not the subject of a special analysis, but it is not completely ignored either. The main attention is drawn to the criteria for evaluating the results of the development of scientific knowledge, and not to this process itself. At the same time, Lakatos emphasizes that "any historical research must be preceded by a heuristic study: the history of science without the philosophy of science is blind."

Program structure: According to Lakatos, each research program, as a set of certain theories, includes:

"hard core" - an integral system of fundamental, particular scientific and ontological assumptions, which is preserved in all theories of this program;
"protective belt", consisting of auxiliary hypotheses and ensuring the safety of the "hard core" from refutation; it can be modified, partially or completely replaced when faced with counterexamples;
normative, methodological rules-regulators prescribing which paths are most promising for further research (“positive heuristics”), and which paths should be avoided (“negative heuristics”).

Describing research programs, Lakatos points out the following features:

rivalry;
universality - they can be applied, in particular, to both ethics and aesthetics;
predictive function: each step of the program should lead to an increase in content, to a "theoretical shift of problems";
the main stages in the development of programs are progress and regression, the boundary of these stages is the “saturation point”.
The new program should explain what the old one could not. The change of programs is the scientific revolution.

5. PROGRAM EFFICIENCY

With regard to this parameter of the latter, Lakatos notes that, firstly, a scientist should not abandon a research program if it does not work effectively: such a refusal is not a universal rule.

Secondly, he also suggests that “the methodology of research programs could help us formulate laws that would stand in the way of the origins of the intellectual turbidity that threatens to flood our cultural environment even before industrial waste and automobile gases spoil the physical environment of our habitat" .

Third, Lakatos argues that understanding science as a battleground for research programs rather than individual theories suggests a new demarcation criterion between "mature science" consisting of research programs and "immature science" consisting of "a well-worn model of trial and error." mistakes." Fourth, “we can evaluate research programs even after they have been eliminated by their heuristic strength: how many new facts they provide, how great is their ability to explain rebuttals in the process of growth” .

CONCLUSION

The concept of I. Lakatos's research programs can, as he himself demonstrates, be applied to the very methodology of science.

In conclusion, a conclusion can be drawn. Imre Lakatos is an outstanding philosopher and methodologist of science of the 20th century. He owns many valuable works that have become classic for the philosophy and methodology of science. The methodology of research programs is the most significant and important work of the Hungarian-British philosopher Imre Lakatos. Today, the concept of scientific rationality developed in this methodology has taken its place in the history of philosophy and the methodology of science.

Bibliography

1. Lakatos I. Methodology of scientific research programs. – M.: Questions of Philosophy. 1995. No. 4. - 356 p.

2. Lakatos I. Falsification and methodology of research programs. M.: Academic project. 1995. - 423 p.

3. Mikeshina L. A. Methodology of scientific knowledge in the context of culture. M. Academic project. 1992. - 278 p.

4. Modern philosophy of science. Reader. (Compilation, translation, introductory article and comments by A.A. Pechenkin). Moscow: Nauka, 1994.

5. Kuhn T. Structure of scientific revolutions M.: AST, 2001.

Refers to "Theory of the Universe"

Imre Lakatos. Methodology of research programs

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 Science, where he became the most prominent among Popper's followers. Lakatos was called the "Knight of Rationality" because he defended the principles of critical rationalism and believed that most processes in science admit of a rational explanation. Lakatos wrote small, but very capacious works. You can get acquainted with his views in the books "Proofs and Refutations" (M., 1967) and "Falsification and Methodology of Research Programs" (M., 1995) published in Russian.

He is one of the most profound and consistent critics of Kuhn's concept of paradigm shift, and opposes the almost theological sense of the scientific paradigm expressed by Kuhn. Lakatos also developed one of the best models of the philosophy of science - methodology of research programs.

1. Three types of falsificationism

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 sharpest corners of Popper's philosophy of science. He identifies three stages in the development of Popper's views: Popper 0 - dogmatic falsificationism, Popper 1 - naive falsificationism, Popper 2 - methodological falsificationism. The last period begins in the 50s and is associated with the development of a normative concept of the growth and development of knowledge based on comprehensive criticism. The first sees science as a process marked out by solid constructions and infallible falsifications (such ideas were promoted by A. Ayer). Nevertheless, Popper showed the fallacy of such a position, because the empirical basis of science is unstable and indefinite, and therefore there can be no talk of fixed protocol sentences and refutations that are not revised in principle.

That our rebuttals can also be fallacious is confirmed by both logic and the history of science.

Methodological falsificationism corrects the error of the dogmatists, showing the fragility of the empirical base of science and the means of hypothesis control it offers (this is shown by Popper in "The Logic of Scientific Discovery"). However, Lakatos continues, methodological falsificationism 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 the theoretical and the actual, Lakatos believes, there are at least three participants: facts and two competing theories. It becomes clear that a theory becomes obsolete 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 advent 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 talks about research programs. The research program is a structural-dynamic unit of his model of science. To understand what a scientific search program is, think about the mechanism of Descartes or Newton, about the evolutionary theory of Darwin or about Copernicanism. A successive change of theories arising from one core occurs 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, 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 different epistemologies and historiography of science, as well as the evolutionary moment of scientific inquiry.

“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 actual history does not meet their standards, they may with desperate boldness they will propose to start anew the whole work of science.

According to I. Lakatos, any methodological concept should function as a historiographic one. Its most profound assessment can be given through criticism of the rational reconstruction of the history of science that it offers.

This is the difference between the position of Lakatos and the theories of Kuhn and Popper. Lakatos accuses Popper of being unhistorical ("History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions"), he sees in his principle of falsifiability a logical ambiguity that distorts history and adapts it to his theory of rationality.

On the other hand, writes Lakatos in his work “Falsification and Methodology of Programs scientific research» (1970), according to Kuhn's theory, the scientific revolution is irrational, one can see in it only the material of adaptation to the psychology of the crowd. In mystical conversion from one paradigm to another, according to Kuhn, there are no rational rules, and therefore Kuhn constantly falls into the sphere of social psychology of discovery. Scientific mutations are starting to look like a kind of religious conversion. Nevertheless, Lakatos himself remains within the problems and atmosphere of Popper's falsificationism. Kuhn's influence is also quite obvious (take, for example, the ideas of the "dogmatic function" of scientific research and "progress through revolutions"). Yet his arguments are more often free from prejudice.

I. Lakatos develops his own concept, quite close to Kuhn's, of the methodology of scientific knowledge, which he calls the methodology of scientific research programs. It is used by him not only to interpret the features of the development of science, but also to evaluate 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 necessary to compare with empiricism not one isolated theory, but a series of successive theories linked together by common fundamental principles. He called this sequence of theories 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 " hard core ", which includes fundamental provisions that are irrefutable for supporters of the program (non-falsifiable hypotheses). That is, this is what is common to all its theories. This metaphysics programs: most general ideas about the reality that the theories included in the program describe; basic laws of interaction of elements of this reality; the main methodological principles associated with this program. For example, the rigid 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 the three well-known Newtonian laws and interact with each other according to the law gravity. Scientists working in a certain program accept its metaphysics, considering it adequate and unproblematic. But in principle there may be other metaphysics that define alternative research programs. So, in the XVII century. Along with Newton's there was a Cartesian program in mechanics, the metaphysical principles of which differed significantly from Newton's.

Thus, the core can be used to judge the nature of the entire program.

The program includes negative heuristic , which is a set of auxiliary hypotheses that protect its core from falsification, from refuting facts. All ingenuity is directed to its articulation and development of hypotheses supporting the core (the so-called "protective belt"). This "protective belt" of the program bears the fire of critical arguments. The ring of auxiliary hypotheses is designed to restrain the attacks of control probes and to protect and consolidate the core in every possible way. That is, they are a kind of methodological rules, some of which indicate which paths should be avoided.

Positive heuristic is a strategy for selecting priority problems and tasks that scientists must solve. The presence of positive heuristics allows for a certain time to ignore criticism and anomalies and engage in constructive research. With such a strategy, scientists have the right to say that they will still get to the facts that are incomprehensible and potentially disproving the program and that their existence is not a reason to abandon the program.

Falsifications, i.e. theoretical criticism and empirical refutation, only the hypothesis of the "protective belt" is subjected. By general agreement, it is forbidden to falsify a hard core. The center of gravity in the methodology and research programs of Lakatos shifts from the refutation of many competing hypotheses to falsification, and at the same time to the verification and confirmation of competing programs. At the same time, the elimination of individual hypotheses of the protective belt leaves the hard core of the program intact and intact.

According to Lakatos, research programs are the greatest scientific achievements and can be evaluated on the basis of a progressive or regressive shift of problems. Those. the research program can develop progressively and regressively. The program progresses until the presence of a rigid core allows us to formulate more and more hypotheses of the “protective layer”. When the production of such hypotheses weakens and it turns out to be impossible to explain new, and even more so to adapt anomalous facts, the regressive stage of development sets in. 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 displaces the latter from the circulation of the community. This is due to the fact that the facts predicted by one program are always anomalies for another.

That is why the development of another research program (for example, Newton) takes place in a "sea of anomalies" or, like Bohr, occurs on unrelated grounds. When subsequent modifications of the "protective belt" do not lead to the prediction of new facts, the program shows itself to be regressive.

I. Lakatos emphasizes the great sustainability of the research program.

"Neither the logical proof of inconsistency, nor the verdict of scientists about an experimentally discovered anomaly, can destroy the research program with one blow."

Those. Unlike Popper's hypotheses, which are struck to death by criticism or experiment, Lakatos' "programs" not only live long, but also die a long and painful death, since the protective belt is sacrificed for the sake of preserving the core.

A research program succeeds if it successfully solves problems, and it fails if it fails to solve these problems.

Within the framework of a successfully developing program, it is possible to develop more and more advanced theories that explain more and more more facts. That is why scientists are inclined to sustainable positive work within the framework of such programs and allow 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 thinks scientists can rationally evaluate the possibilities of the program and decide whether to continue or refuse to participate in it (unlike Kuhn, for whom such a decision is an irrational act of faith). To do this, he proposes the following criterion for rational evaluation of the "progress" and "degeneration" of the program.

A program consisting of a sequence of theories T 1 , T 2 ... T n -1 , T n is progressing if:

T n explains all the facts that T n -1 successfully explained;

T n covers a larger empirical area than the previous theory T n -1 ;

Some of the predictions from this additional empirical content of T n are confirmed.

Those. in a progressively developing program, each successive theory must successfully predict additional facts.

If new theories fail to successfully predict new facts, then the program is "stagnant" or "degenerate." Usually such a program only interprets in hindsight the facts that were 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 be rational to adhere to it, but if it degenerates, then the rational behavior of the scientist will be an attempt to develop a new program or a transition to the position of an already existing and progressive alternative program. But at the same time, Lakatos says that “a newly emerging research program cannot 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-propulsion of the problem, for a certain time it needs support from a stronger and more established rival program.

Thus, the main value of the program is its ability to replenish knowledge and predict new facts. Contradictions and difficulties in explaining any phenomena - according to I. Lakatos - do not significantly affect the attitude of scientists towards it.

In the geometry of Euclid for two thousand years it was not possible to solve the problem of the fifth postulate.

For many decades, infinitesimal calculus, probability theory, and set theory have been developed on a very contradictory basis.

It is known that Newton could not explain the stability on the basis of mechanics. solar system and claimed that God corrects deviations in the motion of the planets caused by various kinds of perturbations.

Despite the fact that such an explanation did not satisfy anyone at all, except, perhaps, Newton himself, who, as you know, was a very religious person (he believed that his research in theology was no less significant than in mathematics and mechanics), the heavenly mechanics as a whole developed successfully. This problem was solved by Laplace only in early XIX in.

Another classic example.

Darwin could not explain the so-called "Jenkins nightmare", and yet his theory was successfully developed. It is known that the Darwinian theory is based on three factors: variability, heredity and selection. Any organism has variability, which is carried out in an undirected way. Because of this, variability can only in a small number of cases be favorable for the adaptation of a given organism to environment. Some variability is not inherited, some is inherited. Evolutionary value has inherited variability. According to Darwin, those organisms that inherit these kinds of changes that give them a greater opportunity to adapt to the environment have a great opportunity for the future. Such organisms survive better and become the basis for a new evolutionary step.

For Darwin, the laws of inheritance—how variation is inherited—were crucial. In his concept of inheritance, he proceeded from the idea that heredity is carried out in a continuous manner.

Imagine that a white man got on African continent. The 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 of "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 evolutionary significance.

Jenkins expressed such considerations. He drew attention to the fact that positive qualities that contribute to the adaptation of the organism 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 sign will dissipate. Therefore, it cannot have evolutionary significance.

Darwin could not cope with this task in any way. It is no coincidence that this reasoning is called "Jenkins' nightmare". Darwin's theory had other difficulties as well. And although Darwin's teachings were 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 the ideas of Darwin, connected, however, with the Mendelian concept of discrete carriers of heredity, which eliminates the "Jenkins' nightmare".

Within the framework of the concept of I. Lakatos, the importance of theory and the research program associated with it for the activity 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 best description and explanation of observed phenomena and, most importantly, the prediction of new facts.

Therefore, when studying the patterns of 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 their empirical data.

I. Lakatos argues in this style. Let us assume that we have calculated the trajectories of the planets on the basis of celestial mechanics. With the help of a telescope, we fix them and see that they differ from the calculated ones. Would a scientist say in this case that the laws of mechanics are wrong? Of course not. He doesn't even have that thought. He will surely say that either the measurements are inaccurate or the calculations are wrong. He can finally admit the presence of another planet, which has not yet been observed, which causes the planet's trajectory to deviate from the calculated one (this was actually the case when Le Verrier and Adams discovered a new planet).

And suppose that in the place where they expected to see the planet, it would not be there. What would they say in this case? What mechanics is wrong? No, that wouldn't happen. They certainly 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 hand, why there are always alternative research programs.

We know that even when Einstein's theory of relativity entered the context of culture, anti-Einstein's theories continued to live.

And remember how genetics developed. Lamarck's 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.

An idea that is strong enough theoretically is always rich enough to be defended.

From the point of view of I. Lakatos, it is possible "to rationally adhere to a regressing program until it is overtaken by a competing program, and even after that." There is always hope for temporary setbacks. However, representatives of regressing programs will inevitably face ever-increasing 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.

“The editors of scientific journals,” writes I. Lakatos, “will refuse to publish their articles, which in general will either contain broad-based reformulations of their position, or the presentation of counterexamples (or even competing programs) through ad hoc linguistic tricks. Organizations that subsidize science will deny them funding...

“I do not claim,” he remarks, “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 (paradigm) reigns supreme, as Kuhn claimed. Usually in any scientific discipline there are several alternative research programs. That. 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 strength in explaining empirically their facts, anticipating the development of science and taking countermeasures against the weakening of this strength. 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 monoparadigm "normal science".

Those. in fact, here I. Lakatos reproduces in other terms, in a more differentiated form, Kuhn's concept of the development of science based on paradigms. However, when interpreting the driving reasons for changing research programs, the specific mechanisms for the development of science, Lakatos does not share Kuhn's views. He sees in science an internal and external history. The internal history of science is based on the movement of ideas, methodology and 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 great importance of these "external factors", but Lakatos gives them secondary importance.

So far, science is more like a battlefield of research programs than a system of isolated islands. “Mature science consists of research programs that look not so much for new facts as for supporting theories, and this, in contrast to the crude check-and-error scheme, is its heuristic strength.” Lakatos saw the weakness of the research programs of Marxism and Freudism 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 has been predicted by Marxism since, say, 1917?” He calls well-known predictions about the absolute impoverishment of the working class, about the coming revolution in the most developed industrial powers, about the absence of contradictions between the socialist countries, unscientific. The scandalous failure of such prophecies was explained by the Marxists with the dubious “theory of imperialism” ( in order to make Russia the "cradle" of the socialist revolution). There were “explanations” for Berlin in 1953, and Budapest in 1956, and Prague in 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 the events. And these, Lakatos notes, are symptoms of stagnation and degeneration. In 1979, John Worrall returned to this problem in his essay "How the Methodology of Research Programs 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 ceased to grow.

That. The concept of I. Lakatos's research programs 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 deals with this problem in his book “Proofs and Refutations” and traces it on the basis of the philosophy of mathematics, as the closest direction to the philosophy of science.

The book by I. Lakatos is, as it were, a continuation of the book by G. Polya - "Mathematics and Admissible Reasoning" (London, 1954). Having analyzed the questions concerning the origin of the conjecture and its verification, Polia 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 is quickly brought to the fore, while all the others are ignored, even forgotten, and its study is neglected.

The subject of mathematics consists in such an abstraction of mathematics, when mathematical theories are replaced by formal systems, proofs - by some sequences of well-known formulas, definitions - by "abbreviated expressions, which" are theoretically optional, but typographically convenient.

This abstraction was invented by Hilbert in order to obtain a powerful technique for studying the problems of methodology and mathematics. But at the same time, I. Lakatos notes that there are problems that fall outside the framework of mathematical abstraction. Among them are all problems related to "meaningful" mathematics and its development, and all problems related to situational logic and the solution of 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 seeks 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 requires that:

a) philosophy was replaced by the logic of science... but

b) the logic of science is nothing but 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.

Formalism, according to I. Lakatos, separates the history of mathematics from the philosophy of mathematics; in fact, the history of mathematics does not exist. Any Formalist must agree with Russell's remark that Boole's Laws of Thought (Boole, 1854) was "the first book ever written on mathematics. Formalism denies the status of mathematics for most of what is usually understood to be included in mathematics, and nothing cannot speak of its “development.” “None of the “critical” periods of mathematical theories can be admitted into the formalistic sky, where mathematical theories dwell like seraphim, cleansed of all stains of earthly unreliability. However, the 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 some sense do not include them", then they can then be admitted.

As I. Lakatos writes, under such conditions, Newton would have to wait four centuries until Peano, Russell and Quine helped him climb into the sky, formalizing his infinitesimal calculus. Dirac turned out to be happier: Schwartz saved his soul during his lifetime. Here I. Lakatos mentions the mathematician's paradoxical difficulty: according to formalist or even deductivist standards, he is not an honest mathematician. Dieudonné speaks of "the absolute necessity for every mathematician who cares about intellectual honesty to present his reasoning in axiomatic form."

Under the modern dominance of formalism, I. Lakatos paraphrases Kant: the history of mathematics, having lost the guidance 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.

According to Lakatos, "formalism" provides a fortress for logical positivist philosophy. According to logical positivism, a statement only makes sense if it is "tautological" or empirical. Since meaningful mathematics is neither "tautological" nor empirical, it must be meaningless, it is pure nonsense. Here he starts from Turquette, who argues with Kopy that Gödel's propositions do not make sense. Kopi believes that these provisions are "a priori truths", but not analytic, they refute the analytic theory of a priori. Lakatos noted that none of them noticed that the special status of Gödel's propositions 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. The theories of informal mathematics are definitely guesses that can hardly be divided into a priori and a posteriori. That. 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 the sense of e, close to the "heuristics" of Paul and Bernays and to the "logic of discovery" or "situational logic" of Popper. Removing the term "methodology and mathematics" to be used 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 identical to formalized mathematics.

He argues that in a formalized theory, two sets of things can be discovered:

1. you can open the solution of problems that the Turing machine (it is a finite list of rules or a finite description of the procedure in our intuitive understanding of the algorithm a) 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 solution.

2. One can find solutions to problems like: whether or not some formula of a theory will be a theorem, in which the possibility of a final solution has not been established, where one can be guided only by the "method" of unguided 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 gives creative mathematicians a rich situational logic that will be neither mechanical nor irrational, but which cannot in any way be recognized and encouraged by formalist philosophy.

But all the same, he admits that the history of mathematics and the logic of mathematical discovery, i.e. phylogenesis and ontogeny of mathematical thought cannot be developed without criticism and the final rejection of formalism.

The formalist philosophy of mathematics has very deep roots. It represents the 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 claim that by the power of our human intellect and feelings, or just feelings, we can reach the truth and know that we have reached it. Skeptics claim that we absolutely cannot reach the truth, or that even if we can reach it, we will not be able to know that we have reached it. In this dispute, mathematics was the proud fortress of dogmatism. Most of the skeptics have tried themselves with the impregnability of this fortress of the dogmas theory of knowledge. I. Lakatos argues that it has long been necessary to challenge this.

Thus, the purpose of this book by I. Lakatos is a challenge to mathematical formalism.

4. The activity of a scientist in revolutionary

and interrevolutionary periods of science

On the question of the activity of a scientist in revolutionary and inter-revolutionary periods, Lakatos expresses such an understanding of cumulative periods when, in interpreting scientific theories, we proceed from the premise that in the course of the revolution The theory of union does not emerge in a fully completed form.

Development, improvement of the program in post-revolutionary period are a necessary condition for scientific progress.

Lakatos recalls Newton, who despised those people who, like Hooke, were stuck on the first naive model and did not have enough perseverance and ability to develop it into a research program, thinking that the first version already constitutes a "discovery".

According to the very original plan of Lakatos, the activities of the scientist in interrevolutionary periods is creative.

How the originally expressed conjecture develops, transforms, changes, improves, Lakatos revealed in his book Proofs and Refutations.

Even in the course of proof, substantiation of knowledge, received during the last more or less significant revolution, this knowledge is transformed, because, Lakatos believes, "man never proves what he intends to prove." Besides,

In Lakatos, unlike Kuhn, revolutionary research activity is not in direct contrast to the activity of a scientist in interrevolutionary 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-revolution period. tional period.

List of sources used

1. Gubin V.D. etc. Philosophy. - M.; 1997. - 432p.

2. Rakitov A.I. Philosophical problems of science. - M.; 1977. - 270s.

3. Giovanni Reale, Dario Antiseri. Western philosophy from its origins to the present day. Part 4 - L.; 1997.

4. Philosophy and methodology of science. Part 1. - M.; 1994. - 304p.

5. Philosophy and methodology of science. Part 2. - M.; 1994. - 200s.

6. Imre Lakatos. Evidence and refutation. - M.; 1967. - 152p.

7. Radugin A.A. Philosophy. Lecture course. - M.; 1995. - 304p.

8. Rakitov A.I. Philosophy. Basic ideas and principles. - M.; 1985.-368s.

9. Sokolov A.N. The subject of philosophy and the rationale for science. - S.P.; 1993. - 160s.

10. Lakatos I. Falsification and methodology of scientific research programs. - M.; 1995.

11. Lakatos I. History of science and its rational reconstructions. - M.; 1978. - 235p.

I. Lakatos: the history of science and its rational reconstructions.

Structuralism: basic ideas. M. Foucault: philosophy of discursive practices.

Philosophical postmodernism and science.

Materials for the lecture

The well-known representative of postpositivism Imre Lakatos (1922-1974), born in Hungary, prepared his 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 Science, where he became the most prominent among Popper's followers. Lakatos was called the "Knight of Rationality" because he advocated the principles of critical rationalism and believed that most processes in science admit of a rational explanation. Lakatos wrote small, but very capacious works. You can get acquainted with his views in the books “Proofs and Refutations” (1967) and “Falsification and Methodology of Research Programs” (1995) published in Russian.

He is one of the most profound and consistent critics of Kuhn's concept of paradigm shift, and opposes the almost theological meaning of Kuhn's scientific paradigm. Lakatos also developed one of the best models of the philosophy of science - the methodology of research programs.

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 necessary to compare with empiricism not one isolated theory, but a series of successive theories, interconnected by common fundamental principles. This sequence of theories he called the research program.

Therefore, the fundamental unit of evaluation of the process of development of 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 irrefutable for the supporters of the program (non-falsifiable hypotheses). That is, this is what is common to all her theories. This is the metaphysics of the program: the most general ideas about the reality that the theories included in the program describe; basic laws of interaction of elements of this reality; the main methodological principles associated with this program. For example, the rigid 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 the three well-known Newtonian laws and interact with each other in accordance with the law of universal gravitation. Scientists working in a certain program accept its metaphysics, considering it adequate and unproblematic. But in principle there may be other metaphysics that define alternative research programs. So, in the XVII century. Along with Newton's there was a Cartesian program in mechanics, the metaphysical principles of which differed significantly from Newton's.

Thus, the core 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 to its articulation and development of hypotheses supporting the core (the so-called "protective belt"). This "protective belt" of the program bears the fire of critical arguments. The ring of auxiliary hypotheses is designed to restrain the attacks of control probes and to protect and consolidate the core in every possible way. That is, they are a kind of methodological rules, some of which indicate which paths should be avoided.

Positive heuristics is a strategy for choosing the priority problems and tasks that scientists must solve. The presence of positive heuristics allows for a certain time to ignore criticism and anomalies and engage in constructive research. With such a strategy, scientists have the right to say that they will still get to the incomprehensible and potentially refuting facts of the program and that their existence is not a reason to abandon the program.

Falsifications, i.e. theoretical criticism and empirical refutation, only the hypothesis of the "protective belt" is subjected. By general agreement, it is forbidden to falsify a hard core. The center of gravity in the methodology of Lakatos's research programs shifts from the refutation of many competing hypotheses to the falsification, and at the same time to the verification and confirmation of competing programs. At the same time, the elimination of individual hypotheses of the protective belt leaves the hard core of the program intact and intact.

According to Lakatos, research programs are the greatest scientific achievements and can be evaluated on the basis of a progressive or regressive shift of problems. That is, the research program can develop progressively and regressively. The program progresses until the presence of a hard core allows us to formulate more and more hypotheses of the "protective layer". When the production of such hypotheses weakens and it turns out to be impossible to explain new, and even more so to adapt anomalous facts, a regressive stage of development sets in. 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 displaces the latter from the circulation of the community. This is due to the fact that the facts predicted by one program are always anomalies for another.

I. Lakatos emphasizes the great sustainability of the research program. "Neither the logical proof of inconsistency, nor the scientists' verdict of an experimentally discovered anomaly, can destroy the research program in one blow."

Unlike Popper's hypotheses, which are struck to death by criticism or experiment, Lakatos' "programs" not only live long, but also die a long and painful death, since the protective belt is sacrificed for the sake of preserving the core.

A research program succeeds if it successfully solves problems, and it fails if it fails to solve these problems.

The main value of the research program is its ability to replenish knowledge, to predict new facts. Contradictions and difficulties in explaining any phenomena, according to I. Lakatos, do not significantly affect the attitude of scientists towards it.

In the geometry of Euclid for two thousand years it was not possible to solve the problem of the fifth postulate. For many decades, infinitesimal calculus, probability theory, and set theory have been 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 perturbations. Despite the fact that such an explanation did not satisfy anyone at all, except perhaps Newton himself, who, as you know, was 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.

In his works, Lakatos shows that in the history of science there are very few periods when one program (paradigm) reigns supreme, as Kuhn claimed. Usually in any scientific discipline there are several alternative research programs. 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 strength in explaining empirical facts, anticipating the development of science and taking countermeasures against the weakening of this strength. 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 monoparadigm "normal science".

In fact, here I. Lakatos reproduces in other terms, in a more differentiated form, Kuhn's concept of the development of science based on paradigms. However, when interpreting the driving reasons for changing research programs, the specific mechanisms for the development of science, Lakatos does not share Kuhn's views. He sees in science an internal and external history. The internal history of science is based on the movement of ideas, methodology, methods of scientific research, what, 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 great importance of these "external factors", but Lakatos gives them secondary importance.

So far, science is more like a battlefield of research programs than a system of isolated islands. “Mature science consists of research programs that look not so much for new facts as for supporting theories; this, in contrast to the crude check-and-error scheme, is its heuristic strength.” Lakatos saw the weakness of the research programs of Marxism and Freudism 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.

Thus, the concept of I. Lakatos's research programs can, as he himself demonstrates, be applied to the very methodology of science.

The diversity of concepts of the philosophy of science developed within the framework of postpositivism has caused many new problems. The result of this was the realization of the hopelessness of creating a generally recognized theory describing the structure and development of science. This circumstance influenced the completion of the next stage in the philosophy of positivism - postpositivism.

Today, postpositivism has largely lost its former significance. This is due to the fact that the creation of a generally recognized theory of the development of science has reached a dead end. The presence of discussions containing many conflicting points of view within the framework of postpositivism itself once again showed the pluralistic nature of philosophical knowledge.

Close in spirit to post-positivism are the studies of the French epistemological school (neo-rationalism), in particular G. BashlyaraiM. Foucault. The concept of "epistemological gap", introduced by Bachelard, coincides in meaning with Kuhn's concept of scientific revolution, and Foucault's "archeology of knowledge" program offers a methodological basis for research on the history of science.

Structuralism: basic ideas. M. Foucault: philosophy of discursive practices. Philosophical postmodernism and science.

Structuralism of the 20th century opposes in philosophy the approach that lays the basis for the “subject”, “consciousness” of the individual and his activity, etc. He turns to the study of anonymous, impersonal, invariant structures that are found in the minds of individuals and groups, and in the activities of people, and in public life, but, above all, in language. The fundamental idea is that language is a system of completely arbitrary signs that have meaning only in their mutual relations to each other, and the system of these relations of signs is immeasurably more important than the relation of signs to the objects they designate. Nietzsche's ideas and Freud's doctrine of the unconscious, which reveals itself in speech, also had a significant influence on structuralism. Claude Levi-Strauss turned to the study of archaic cultures, Roland Barthes - to the structures of literary creativity, Jean Lacan - to the structures of the unconscious. Michel Foucault became famous thanks to the philosophy of discursive practices he developed, called archeology. This "archeology" speaks not so much of a person, society or history, but of discourses and discursive practices, anonymous, fragmentary and changeable structures of statements in which the "subject" of classical philosophy disappears. Discursive practices, ensembles of discursive events coexist, intersect, connect, disconnect, interrupt, disperse, get lost in labyrinths, ignore each other, and so on. etc. The principles of cohesion do not remain unchanged - they arise and disappear, being dispersed by the play of chance. Foucault paid special attention to marginal phenomena associated with all sorts of "deviations". He sees the task of the intellectual in shaking the foundations, "scattering" the familiar and seemingly known, in re-problematization.

Representatives of poststructuralism and postmodernism were especially successful in this linguistic shock of the foundations, who, following Nietzsche’s call to “philosophize with a hammer” and Heidegger’s intention to destroy the history of ontology, subject the entire tradition of European “rationality” to a special kind of critical analysis, deconstruction (J.-F. Lyotard , J. Deleuze, J. Derrida, J. Baudrillard and others).

According to the philosophers of this trend, any "construction" in the sphere of thought, any construction of systems, is outdated. They are united by reliance on text and language, dislike and ironic attitude to any certainty, sequence, order, unambiguity, accuracy, logic, “big stories” (for example, any philosophical systems and scientific theories), and a passion for intellectual game, mental freedom, contradictions, "disconsensus", "agonistics", paradoxes, fragmentation, instability, destruction, dispersion and blurring, eccentricity and outrageousness, simulation and ambiguity.

Knowledge is that which is evidence-based. However, there is criticism (of what we can all justify with the help of intellect and feelings). The history of scientific theory has continuity - the development of a certain research program. As an initial model for the growth of scientific knowledge, Lakatos takes the world of ideas, autonomously developing knowledge, in which the "internal history" of knowledge is realized. However, while according to Popper, one theory is replaced by another, the old theory is completely rejected, according to Lakatos, the growth of knowledge takes place in the form of a critical dialogue of competing research programs. It is they, and not theories, that are the fundamental unit of the development of science.

Research program is realized in a historically evolving sequence of theories, each of which arises from the previous one by modification caused by the encounter with experimental counterexamples that contradict it. The “hard core” of a program moves from one theory of a given program to another, and the protective belt, consisting of auxiliary hypotheses, can be partially destroyed.

The main value of the program is its ability to replenish knowledge and predict new facts. Contradictions and difficulties in explaining any phenomena do not significantly affect the attitude of scientists towards it (which actually happens!). Indeed, an idea that is theoretically strong enough always turns out to be rich enough to be defended. Only when it is destroyed hard core» program, it will be necessary to move from the old research program to the new one. This is the essence of the "scientific revolution".

In modern Western philosophy, the problem of the growth and development of knowledge is central. The problem was especially actively developed by supporters of post-positivism - Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and others.

Following Popper, Lakatos believes that the basis of the theory of scientific rationality should be principle of criticism. This principle is universal; however, "rational criticism" should not be reduced to a demand for ruthless falsification. Anomalies should not encourage scientists to crack down on their theories; the rational behavior of the researcher is to move forward, not numb from individual failures, if this movement promises new successes.

In Lakatos, it is not two theories that are compared and evaluated, as in Popper's, but a series of them, defined as a research program. The development of science is "the history of the birth, life and death of research programs."

Basic principle of Lakatos is a combination of philosophy and the history of science. In this regard, he formulates an important proposition: “The philosophy of science without the history of science is empty; the history of science without the philosophy of science is blind.” Therefore, he developed the theory of "research programs".

Research program is a set of theories developing on the basis of common research and methodological principles. Structurally includes:
1) "hard core" - the fundamental principles of all theories of the program, helping to maintain its integrity; 2) "protective belt" - auxiliary hypotheses of the program; it ensures the safety of the "hard core". The protective belt must adapt and remake under the pressure of new facts; 3) methodological principles that determine the prospects for the application of this program - "positive" and "negative heuristics".

« Negative Heuristic”is a restriction in the form of rules to avoid false paths of knowledge. "Negative heuristic" defines the "hard core" of the program, considered "irrefutable". " Positive heuristic" is a set of rules that allow you to modify the program in such a way as to save it or improve it. "Positive heuristics" consists of arguments more or less clear, and assumptions more or less probable, aimed at changing and developing the research program.

The evolution of a specific program occurs due to the modification and refinement of the "safety belt", while the destruction of the "hard core" means the cancellation of the program and its replacement by a competing one.

The main criterion for the scientific nature of the program is the growth of knowledge. While the program gives an increase in knowledge ( progressive program), the work of a scientist within its framework is “rational”. When the program loses its predictive power and works only on auxiliary hypotheses, Lakatos prescribes to abandon it ( regressive program).

Unlike Kuhn, Lakatos suggests that periods of "normal science" when a single research program dominates are extremely rare. And that Kuhn's "paradigm" is the research program that temporarily seized the monopoly. More often there are periods when there are many research programs and they compete with each other. But science doesn't have to be "normal" because the sooner the rivalry starts, the better it is for progress. The theory is never falsified, but replaced by a better one. The strength of a research program is determined by heuristic strength, which refers to the ability of the program to theoretically predict the emergence of new facts.

Lakatos further distinguishes two main types of science: mature science» is a type of science where research programs compete. It consists of research programs that not only explain unknown facts, but also anticipate new theories. Only mature science has "heuristic power"; " Immature Science» is a type of science where research is carried out according to a model.

Changing the main research programs is scientific revolution. According to Lakatos, there have been 3 scientific revolutions, the result of which was a consistent change in inductivism, conventionalism and the methodology of research programs. But this occurrence is rare. If some experiment shows that the program does not work, then it needs to be replaced. But if, after some time, another scientist explains that experiment in terms of an “outdated program”, then this program will be restored again. An example, Darwin's theory and "Jenkins' nightmare".

Thus, from the concept of Lakatos it is clear that scientific revolutions do not play a very significant role. In science, there are almost never periods of undivided domination of one "program", because there is competition between different programs.

Shifts or slight change - all these estimates are made only retrospectively. According to Lakatos, the history of science is the judge of any concept.

lakatos (lakatos) imre

(1922 -1974) Hung.-Brit. philosopher and historian of science. Genus. in Hungary, during the Second World War he participated in the anti-fascist resistance. During the Nazi period, he changed his real name (Lipschitz) to Molnar (Melnik), and during the communist rule to the more proletarian Lakatosh (Joiner). He worked on his dissertation on the philosophy of mathematics at Moscow University. In the late 1940s he was accused of revisionism and spent more than three years in prison. In 1956 he emigrated to Austria, then to England. From 1960 he taught at the London School of Economics, became a student and follower of Popper and made an important and striking contribution to the philosophy and methodology of critical rationalism through his work. In his early works L. offered an original version of the logic of conjecture and refutation, applying it as a rational reconstruction of the growth of knowledge in mathematics XVII-XIX centuries. Partially reviewing their original methodological guidelines, L. later developed a universal concept for the development of science, based on the idea of competing research programs. Methodology L. considers the growth of "mature" theoretical science as a succession of research programs, which are a continuously connected sequence of theories. Each theory of the program (with the exception of the original one) arises as a result of adding auxiliary hypotheses to the previous theory. The continuity of the program is subject to special regulatory rules. Some of these rules prescribe which paths to follow in the course of further research ("positive heuristic"), others tell which paths to avoid here ("negative heuristic"). Important structural element research programs is a "hard core" that combines conditionally not refuted, specific to a given program of fundamental assumptions. The "negative heuristic" forbids in the process of checking research programs to direct the modus tollens rule of classical logic to this "hard core" when faced with anomalies and counterexamples. Instead, she proposes to invent auxiliary hypotheses that form a "safety belt" around the "hard core" of the research program. This protective belt can be modified or even completely replaced when confronted with facts that contradict the program. For its part, "positive heuristics" includes ideas and recipes on how to modify or develop a theory that does not withstand empirical testing, how to modify or refine the "safety belt", what new models need to be developed to expand the scope of the program.

According to L., in the development of research programs can be divided into two main stages progressive and degenerate. At the progressive stage, "positive heuristics" can stimulate the development of auxiliary hypotheses that expand the empirical and theoretical content of the program. However, later on, having reached the "saturation point", the development of the research program slows down sharply. The number of ad hoc hypotheses and incompatible facts is increasing, internal conceptual contradictions, paradoxes, etc. appear in it. Nevertheless, the presence of such symptoms cannot yet serve as an objective basis for refusing the research program. Such a basis, according to L., appears only from the moment of the emergence of a rival research program that is able to explain the empirical success of its predecessor, as well as theoretically predict previously unknown facts that receive empirical confirmation.

L. attached particular importance to the creation of models for the development of scientific and theoretical knowledge of historical and scientific research. His famous aphorism"The philosophy of science without the history of science is empty; the history of science without the philosophy of science is blind." Methodological analysis, carried out in order to identify the scientific nature of a particular research program, falls, in his opinion, into the following stages: promotion of rational reconstruction; comparison of this rational reconstruction with historical and scientific data on a particular period in the development of the corresponding science; criticism of rational reconstruction for its lack of historicity and of real history for its lack of rationality. The concept of L. is one of best achievements modern philosophy and methodology of science. According to his philosophical attitudes, he was a consistent supporter of rationalism, which was reflected in his intense controversy in the 60-70s with Kuhn, Feyerabend and a number of other philosophers of science.

I. P. Merkulov

Evidence and refutation. M, 1967; History of science and its rational reconstructions // Structure and development of science. M., 1978; Falsification and methodology of research programs. M, 1995; The Changing Logic of Scientific Discovery. L., 1973.