Imre Lakatos spends considerable time examining alternative theories about the nature of science before introducing us to his own. He does this to stress the importance of the relationship between philosophy of science and reconstruction of the history of science. He contends that without a history of science, there is nothing to philosophize about and without a philosophy of science, there is no way to tell what information should be included in the history of science. He stress the idea that philosophy of science provides the demarcation between those elements that are internal for the science and those that are external to it. For Lakatos, the philosophy of science not only provides the demarcation rules, but also the rules for normatively evaluating the internal elements of a science when reconstructing episodes of theory change.
The internal history of a science is the history of the development of the science with reference to "good" or "bad" practices within the science. It is supposed to show the reasons why one scientific program replaced another in terms of which was doing better science. In other words, it is concerned with the practice of science as a purely scientific enterprise.
Imre Lakatos
The external history of a science is the history of all of the factors outside the scientific practices which may have influenced the development of a science. The external history explains the role of non-scientific forces on the history of a science. In other words, it is concerned with the factors that do not have a place in the normative philosophy of science guiding the rational reconstruction of the internal history. There are some philosophies of science that reject the separation of internal and external elements of science arguing that science is merely another element inextricably woven into a larger social history. For those theories that accept this distinction, the external history is supposed to account for the factors that may have influenced the development of the science in a non-scientific way.
For exampel, consider the case of a theory being replaced because another theory is shown to be better. This would fall within the internal history of the science. At one point the two theories are competing and the philosophy of science can tell us how one was proven superior to the other within the science. Contrast this with a case in which two theories are competing and one wins out, not based on the "scientific merits," but rather because all of the advocates of the former theory are killed when terrorists attack their convention. This is event would fall in the external history of the science because it relates to the non-rational factors relating to theory change.
Lakatos on Inductivism
Lakatos points out that for inductivists, there are really only two types of propositions within a science factual statements about empirical observations and generalizations that are inductively supported by factual statements. He adds that inductivist reconstructions of the internal history of a science rely upon their ability to show how changes in the set of factual statements created changes in the accepted generalizations. It proceeds by reconstructing a history in which different (more accurate or novel) observations give rise to newer and better generalizations, thereby creating progress in science. Carnap is an example of an inductivist.
Inductivism is compatible with a wide range of theories concerning the external history of science. It concerns itself with the movement from factual statements to generalizations and changes in the accepted generalizations leaving the external history to a separate, independent theory.
Conventionalism is a view of science in which the end product is a conventionally accepted schema for organizing information about the world. If one accepts conventionalism, then she drops the notion of proven true as referring to some objective standard of truth. Instead, she opts for a version of truth where something is true, so long as it is consistent with the conventionally accepted theoretical framework for organizing our knowledge.
Conventionalism does not offer a rational reconstruction of the external history of the science because the establishment of the convention need not stem from rational principles. However, once a convention is adopted, it is possible to provide a rational reconstruction of the changes within the science by relating them to the accepted standards of the science.
Lakatos on Falsificationism
Lakatos characterizes falsificationism as a response to inductivism and Duhemian Conventionalism. For the falsificationist, a theory is only scientific if it makes predictions that could conflict with observations. Popper is a falsificationist. The major problems faced by the falsificationist arise in evaluating observational statements and their subsequent role in theory testing. We will discuss this more when we discuss Hanson, Putnam, and Suppe.
Falsificationism reconstructs the history of science as a series of "crucial experiments" in which competing theories make differing predictions about some phenomena and one wins out owing to its predictive success.
In generating hs own philosophy of science, that of research programs, Lakatos borrows from both falsificationism and conventionalism. Lakatos introduces the research program as the unit of study in the history of science. A research program is a conventionalism accepted set of facts and concepts coupled with a positive heuristic. A positive heuristic is a set of principles that guide the theoretical development of the program. Under his model, science makes progress so long as the positive heuristic is capable of developing new theoretical principles in advance of the empirical research that they explain. This is the falsificationist aspect of his view -- if a program is always playing catch-up to the predictions and observations of a competing program, then we should expect the former program to be replaced by the latter.
He asserts that science does not proceed as the falsificationist believes (i.e. a series of critical experiments), but rather, by a war of attrition where one theory wins out only after a long series of explanatory successes that simply cannot be matched by its opponent. This is the conventionalist aspect of his view. He asserts that the decision to abandon one program in favor of another is not a simple matter of falsificationist evidence, but rather represents a choice concerning the relative prospective merits of the two programs. He contends that it is not irrational to adhere to a theory despite its failure to keep pace with its competitors, so long as one remains honest about the public success and/or failures of the competing theories. He accepts that it may be rational to accept the failures of a new program as paying one's dues during the early stages of development with the expectation that revision will lead to a newer, better program.
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