Kuhn , Lakatos , and Laudan Applications in the History of Physics and Psychology

" Kuhnians depict the history of any scientific discipline as a succession of incommensurable paradigms. Empirical work done in one paradigm is of little relevance to another, and comparisons of paradigms on such familiar grounds as experimental adequacy are said to be inconclusive. Different paradigms do not agree on what constitutes knowledge or the meaning of truth. The recent work of other philosophers of science, such as Lakatos and Laudan, however, leads to expectations about the history of a scientific discipline that are quite different from Kuhn's. In this article, the authors show that Lakatos's and Laudan's accounts provide more veridical analyses than popularized Kuhnian versions when applied to episodes in the history of physics and psychology. Although different research programs (paradigms) have regularly competed in both domains of inquiry, scientific progress in both has been rational critical experiments have been performed (that is, programs are not incommensurable), and research programs themselves evolve in ways not predicted by Kuhn's account. In this article we present a brief review, analysis, and application of some nonpositivist accounts of science and scientific change proposed since the early 1960s. The individuals most prominently identiffed with these accounts are Kuhn (1962), Lakatos (1970, 1978), and Laudan (1977, 1981a). We will show that the view commonly attributed to Kuhn, although heuristically compelling, contains important features that are inaccurate when applied to historical developments in physics, the psychology of learning, and mediation theory. The account offered by Lakatos (1970) provides an attractive solution to some of the difficulties posed by Kuhn's analysis but has liabilities of its own. These are remedied by Laudan (1977), who provided a critical synthesis of the accounts offered by Kuhn and Lakatos while making a number of original contributions. In this article, first Lakatos's ideas are outlined against a backdrop of Kuhn's position. Next, some difficulties in Lakatos's account are identified, and last, the solutions offered by Laudan are described. Applications in the history of physics and psychology are used to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each account . K u h n ' s I d e a s According to Kuhn (1962) the history of any science reflects two distinct types of activities, which he called "normal science" and "revolutionary science" (Krasner & Houts, 1984; Popper, 1970; Weimer & Palermo, 1973; Williams, 1970). The first of these, normal science, involves long periods of calm in which the scientific community works to broaden and deepen the explanatory scope of a theoretical account based on a single set of fundamental beliefs. For the most part, these beliefs are not questioned. Revolutionary science occurs during brief periods of chaos, when the fundamental beliefs that previously supported normal science are jettisoned and replaced. To identify these sets of fundamental beliefs, which Pepper (1942)dubbed world hypotheses, Kuhn used the term paradigm. Paradigms were taken to include unique combinations of ontology, epistemology, and methodology (Kuhn, 1962, pp. 4-5). According to Kuhn, the beliefs constituting a paradigm are so fundamental that they are immune from empirical testing (1962, Ch. 3). Experimental failures may lead to the rejection of specific theories, but the paradigm itself remains untouched and thus directs the construction of new theories. Because the paradigm determines the way scientists make sense of the world, without it there is nothing about which to construct theories. The occasional replacement of one paradigm by another is, therefore, a cataclysmic event. In a sense, the world of the old paradigm is destroyed with it, and a new world is born with its successor. This process, which represents the most spectacular type of scientific change, is called a "scientific revolution." Examples include the Copernican revolution, which replaced the world of Aristotle with that of Newton, and Einstein's later replacement of Newton's world. Two remarkable features separate Kuhn's account of science from those that preceded it. First, Kuhn removed experimental evidence from the central place it occupied in earlier accounts. He denied July 1985 • American Psychologist Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 7, 755-769 755 that experimental evidence plays a decisive role in the most important kind of scientific change, when one paradigm replaces another (1962, Ch. 12). Second, he argued that it is impossible to claim the objective superiority of one paradigm over any other. This is because the rules used to appraise scientific procedures--and experimental results--are supplied by the paradigms themselves, with different rules supplied by each. Judgments based on such rules, then, would favor the paradigm from which they were selected. If no rules exist apart from specific paradigms, there is no neutral standpoint from which to judge among rivals. Because arguments against a rival paradigm talk past the standards recognized by the rival (Kuhn, 1962, p. 94), Kuhn concluded that paradigms are incommensurable. That is, there is no common basis for comparing one with another. Scientific revolutions are, therefore, not rule governed. To those who equated rationality with rules, this conclusion was tantamount to the claim that scientific change is not rational (for example, Manicas & Secord, 1983; McGuire, 1982; Scheffier, 1967; Suppe, 1977). Correspondingly, the account of consensus formation Kuhn offered in place of rule-governed change was dismissed by some as an appeal to mob psychology (for example, Lakatos, 1970). The problem of incommensurability and the connected charge of irrationalism prevented many philosophers of science from accepting Kuhn's ideas. Quite the reverse was true among scientists, particularly social scientists (Krasner & Hours, 1984; Murray, 1984; Palermo, 1971; Reese & Overton, 1970; Weimer, 1974). The word paradigm rapidly became part of the jargon of working scientists, many of whom seemed quite happy to accept extreme versions of the incommensurability thesis. Psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists adopted Kuhn's assumptions, pigeonholing ideas and theories by claiming the relativity of scientific truth (see Gutting, 1980, for an extensive bibliography). Consider, for example, an influential article published by Reese and Overton (1970) in which they concluded that pretheoretical models have a pervasive effect upon theory construction. Theories built upon radically different models are logically independent and cannot be assimilated to each other. They reflect representations of different ways of looking at the world and as such are incompatible in The authors gratefully acknowledge the critical comments on an earlier draft of this article provided by Harold I. Brown, Arthur C. Houts, Larry Laudan, Frank C. Leeming, Edwin Koshland, David Morgan, Robert A. Neimeyer, Hayne W. Reese, Robert N. Vidulich, and John H. Whiteley. Requests for reprints should be sent to Barry Gholson, Department of Psychology, Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee 38152. their implications. Different world views involve different understanding of what is knowledge and hence the meaning of truth. (p. 144) Reese and Overton drew upon two main sources: Pepper (1942) and Kuhn (1962). In the present article, the concern is not to clarify Kuhn's theory of science. Kuhn himself has attempted this (1970, postscript; 1977, Chs. 1 l 13) with little or no success in preventing the proliferation of misreadings of his work. Indeed, these misreadings are now so widespread that they have assumed a life of their own. (For reviews, see Peterson, 1981, and Gutting, 1980, pp. 1-21.)