Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

second concerns how the debate managed to havesuch long-term significance, given that the partiesthemselves did virtually nothing to pursue theirdisagreements beyond the one encounter. Thisbook is focused mainly on the second question, butsomething needs to be said about the first.The debate’s organiser was Imre Lakatos (1922–74), then Lecturer in Logic at the London School ofEconomics, where Popper presided as Professor.Lakatos staged the debate to pave the way for hisown ‘third way’ between what he hoped would beseen as the extreme stances taken by Kuhn andPopper toward the constitution of the scientificenterprise. From Lakatos’ standpoint (which waslargely correct), Kuhn and Popper represented theauthoritarian and libertarian poles of philosophicalscience policy. However, neither Kuhn nor Popperwanted this debate to look like a debate. Kuhn neverbelieved in the value of formal confrontations,while Popper – who officially embraced them – wouldnot agree to equal billing with the upstart Kuhn.But Popper did agree to chair a session in whichKuhn, Lakatos and Popper’s most radical follower,Paul Feyerabend (1924–94), would try to map theconceptual ground covered between Kuhn andPopper. Since Kuhn’s paper was already commissionedto appear in a Popper Festschrift, much of thesting of the encounter would be mitigated. In this11