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Yet if we begin from the notion that human knowledge — including
scientific knowledge — is fallible, then one immediately removes science from
some austere or misconceived realm that aspires to and succeeds in achieving a
kind of knowledge that is radically different from that of other fields of inquiry.
Even Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery 4 is not the positivist or reductionist
account it is sometimes rhetorically asserted to be. Furthermore, in pointing to
logical, epistemological and historiographic problems with his construction,
Popper's students and critics offered still more flexible interpretations of what
scientific practice is. Such criticism could reach the radical differentiation from
Popper represented by Paul Feyerabend. 5
I would emphasize, however, the more limited criticism embodied in the
work of Imre Lakatos. 6
Relative to Popper's attention to theories and the defeat
of theories, Lakatos shifted the unit of epistemological analysis from theory to
research programs and their comparative analysis and judgment. At the very
core of the research program, as understood by Lakatos, are metaphysical
principles about which we have no certitude, but which we allow the scientist (or
any other enquirer) to assume by convention as a necessary ground for any
research enterprise. Such constructed research programs are examined for
logical consistency and empirical corroboration, and it is also important that there
be competing research programs. Among these competing programs, we make
judgments neither reductively nor by some absolute test but rather by enquiring
into the comparative strength and fruitfulness of the programs. Even if the
relevant scientific (or other) community comes to the point of making a decision