Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

context, Lakatos hoped to compare favourably withhis sparring partner, Feyerabend, whose ‘epistemologicalanarchism’ combined the worst tendenciesin Kuhn and Popper – or so Lakatos thought.Unfortunately, neither Feyerabend nor Lakatosfinished his paper on time, though the eventualfruits of their endeavours bore the marks of a longgestation. ‘Consolations for the Specialist’ turnedout to be a written-up version of Feyerabend’sunanswered correspondence with Kuhn, while‘Falsificationism and the Methodology of ScientificResearch Programmes’ was an annotated and moresophisticated version of Lakatos’ undergraduatelectures. Both are included in the volume thatLakatos and his student, Alan Musgrave, finallypublished five years after the debate, the seminalCriticism and the Growth of Knowledge. However, atthe time of the encounter, it seemed that Kuhnwould be left alone to face Popper – and Kuhnhimself was still working on his paper! The first lineof defence was to have an eager and adept studentfamiliar with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions tofill the available space. However, Kuhn, perhapsbecause of his own academic insecurities, refused toshare the podium with the student, JagdishHattiangadi, who went on to chair Canada’s mostinnovative philosophy department. Instead, Kuhnagreed to respond to Hattiangadi’s mentor, John12