Maxwell, Nicholas (2023) What Lakatos Overlooked: A Metaphysical “Hard Core” of Unity for Science. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Lakatos held that science proceeds by means of competing research programme, each with its own “hard core” or paradigm. He intended this view to reconcile the competing views of Kuhn and Popper. But what Lakatos overlooked is that science needs to be construed to be one gigantic research programme with, as its “hard core”, a metaphysical thesis that asserts that the universe is such that there is an inherent unity in the laws that govern the way physical phenomena occur. The conception of science that emerges from this insight succeeds in doing what Lakatos’s own view fails to do; it has fruitful implications for science itself, and solves the problem of induction.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Maxwell, Nicholas nicholas.maxwell@ucl.ac.uk 0000-0002-2575-5990
Keywords:	Imre Lakatos; Karl Popper; Thomas Kuhn; Metaphysics for Science; Theory unity; Problem of induction
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > History of Science Case Studies General Issues > Philosophers of Science Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Structure of Theories
Depositing User:	Nicholas Maxwell
Date Deposited:	27 Feb 2023 20:19
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2023 20:19
Item ID:	21801
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > History of Science Case Studies General Issues > Philosophers of Science Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Structure of Theories
Date:	27 February 2023
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/21801

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