Abstract
Many of the papers delivered at the Kronberg conference did not directly criticize the LSE position. Rather they suggested alternatives. I shall not attempt to criticize these alternatives here, but shall simply try to show that the various specific criticisms which were directed at the methodology of scientific research programmes miss their mark. This will involve me in replying directly only to the papers by Professors Koertge, Musgrave and Post.1 (I shall also make a few remarks on the paper by Professor Feyerabend.).
My thanks for critical comments on a previous draft of this paper are due to Peter Clark, Greg Currie, Peter Urbach and John Watkins.
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Notes
Not entirely correctly as Grünbaum persuasively argues above, p. 120 (cf. Watkins’s comments below).
Koertge introduces considerations of plausibility’ (p. 262) and Post refers several times to his earlier attempt to characterise a theory’s ‘simplicity’ (p. 318, note 7). Indeed I find it difficult to understand why Post is so much against our addressing the problem of ad hoc explanations when he confronted the very same problem in his earlier [1960] paper on simplicity. There (p. 32) he gives the problem the following clear formulation (his solution of the problem is, I fear, much less satisfactory): “The merit of a scientific theory is judged not only by its logical consistency and its correspondence with experience… (Indeed many crank theories, precisely the ones most difficult to eliminate, would qualify for acceptance under these two criteria!)”
See above, p. 313.
See above, p. 268.
See Lakatos [1974].
Koertge expresses some doubt about whether or not the criterion is, in fact, time-dependent. I had hoped that this was clear. I said, following Zahar, that if a hitherto unknown fact was first discovered as a result of its being predicted by a theory, then this is a sufficient condition for the fact to support the theory, but it is not a necessary condition. (See above, p. 49.)
Musgrave [1974].
See Zahar [1973].
See Worrall [1976].
See her contribution above, (especially pp. 261–267). In a much earlier and famous paper, Adolf Grünbaum pursued the same hope. His solution was that the second of the two above courses was the correct one, whenever the (posterior) probability of A was extremely high. This solution seems to me to suffer from two defects. First there is no generally accepted inductive logic to provide us with values for the probability of A in the light of the evidence. Secondly, if there were such an inductive logic it would surely give high probabilities to ‘well-entrenched’, ‘plausible’, ‘well-tested’ theories. Yet many major scientific innovations have involved the overthrow of precisely such theories.
Above, p. 260.
See particularly his [1971], p. 92.
There is one other point which Musgrave makes here, and on which I think he is quite right. I should have been more careful always to make explicit the distinction between a ‘basic’ theory as I called it above and a full theory or theoretical system, consisting of the ‘basic’ theory together with auxiliary theories. Only the latter can be directly inconsistent with experimental reports. But I did stress this point at least in my Section 3 (p. 52), and I certainly never followed Lakatos in talking about it being permissible to ‘ignore’ refutations of theories. This locution gives MSRP an unwarranted anti-falsificationist air. All refutations constitute problems. Lakatos did, however have an important point even if it was infelicitously expressed. Lakatos saw that the driving force for science was in large part provided not by refutations of existing theories but by much higher level ‘heuristic’ considerations. (See p. 336.)
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© 1978 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Worrall, J. (1978). Research Programmes, Empirical Support, and the Duhem Problem: Replies to Criticism. 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_15
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