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Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth
"A book that shakes philosophy of science to its roots. Laudan both destroys and creates. With detailed, scathing criticisms, he attacks the 'pregnant confusions' in extant philosophies of science. The progress they espouse derives from strictly empirical criteria, he complains, and this clashes with historical evidence. Accordingly, Laudan constructs a remedy from historical examples that involves nothing less than the redefinition of scientific rationality and progress . . . Surprisingly, after this reshuffling, science still looks like a noble-and progressive-enterprise ... The glory of Laudan's system is that it preserves scientific rationality and progress in the presence of social influence. We can admit extra-scientific influences without lapsing into complete relativism. . . a must for both observers and practitioners of science." -- Physics Today "A critique and substantial revision of the historic theories of scientific rationality and progress (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc.). Laudan focuses on contextual problem solving effectiveness (carefully defined) as a criterion for progress, and expands the notion of 'paradigm' to a 'research tradition,' thus providing a meta-empirical basis for the commensurability of competing theories. From this perspective, Laudan suggests revised programs for history and philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the sociology of science. A superb work, closely argued, clearly written, and extensively annotated, this book will become a widely required text in intermediate courses."-- Choice
268 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Larry Laudan
21 books12 followersLarry Laudan was an American philosopher of science and epistemologist. He strongly criticized the traditions of positivism, realism, and relativism, and he defended a view of science as a privileged and progressive institution against popular challenges.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 1, 2020
I picked this up during a time that I was really interested in epistemology. I'm still interested in it, but this book didn't quite scratch the itch I'd hoped it would. It took a while to read because it wasn’t getting into the meat of the philosophy I wanted it to, and so I read the first half over a period of about two and a half years, on and off, and then finally decided to knock it out, at which point it still took me a long time because it didn’t grab my interest until close to the end.
Philosophy of science is something I’ve long been interested in but haven’t really given adequate attention. What examples of it I’m familiar with, aside from some of Karl Popper’s work, severely lack in merit or even a basic understanding of science. Or that's how it's always struck me. I could be wrong and seriously misunderstanding the works of philosophers of science, which is very possible. But since so much other philosophy, even the kinds with questionable output, at least makes enough sense to understand what is being said, I don't suspect that my problem with the philosophy of science is that it's somehow a more complex beast. It's by no means as complex as science is itself, yet seems somehow distant and unfamiliar with science.
Instead I get the impression that those philosophizing about science don't grasp how science works. Instead they have ideas about how it should work or how we should think of it or what makes some science better than other science or what kind of value it produces, but without connecting these ideas with science itself. They write as though they've never taken a basic science course beyond grade school, and the depth of their thought about it is totally divorced from reality.
It's like a philosopher of art ruminating on how art should be performed, what art means, and how we should evaluate the subjective merits of art, but without reconciling any of this with how art is created, what the artists themselves think, and without knowing how to paint anything. So the philosophy of science is something I'm always skeptical of, but also very interested in seeing done well. I want to like it and find it valuable, but very little of it seems to be. Perhaps my vantage point from within science makes it hard for me to objectively analyze this topic. Or maybe this is why I find science itself to be a lot more substantive than the philosophy that tries to understand it.
This book takes an interesting approach in critiquing many of the leading (at the time it was written) philosophers of science, including Feyerabend, Kuhn, Popper, and Lakatos, most of whom I was partially familiar with, and laying out the author’s own theory on how we should instead think of science or evaluating competing “research traditions”. The problem is that for most of the book, these ideas don’t seem much better stated or grounded than the ideas he is, justifiably, criticizing. And I do want to point out that of the ideas he criticized that I was already familiar with, they were very much in need of criticizing. His solutions, while better, didn't seem as big a step forward as one might like. Other times, Laudan seemed to indicate that ideas put forward by these philosophers, such as Feyeraband or Lakatos, were incomplete or suffering, but I never saw him explain why.
Laudan is clear and careful about his terminology, and for many of the ideas he looks at he makes sure to distinguish between different forms of those ideas. Take the history of science, for example. He breaks this into two categories: The actual history of science, that is, all the objective facts pertaining to how science has been conducted over the centuries, and then the History of Science, the discipline of historians piecing together this history, developing narratives, figuring out what is or isn't important to the big picture.
Larry Laudan has the strength of being driven by intellectual integrity which is constantly on display, even criticizing poorly developed defenses of ideas he seems to agree with. I appreciated this. But for too long the book feels as though it goes in circles, knocking down some disagreeable ideas and for the right reasons, proposing new definitions and criteria by which to evaluate science, but raising questions that the author fails to answer or propose solutions for. His vision of progressive science sounds good, but to my mind it isn’t spelled out clearly enough to be useful or actionable. He has equally valid thoughts on history and historiography that he does on philosophy, and his ruminations on these topics were interesting, even if they felt fruitless to me.
What ultimately made the book worth reading was the final chapter, which was extremely well done, and hits on many of the arguments and ideas introduced earlier, finally giving them a sense of importance. In this chapter Laudan discusses the sociology of science and knowledge. The discussion of immanent and non immanent ideas was fascinating. Immanent ideas in science are those explained by rational or otherwise reasonable sources that are justified scientific beliefs based on scientific insights, whereas non immanent ideas are those that are integrated from outside, culturally or socially influenced, for example. It is only the latter ideas, not the former, he argues, that sociologists can really say anything about when it comes to science. I tend to agree. Unfortunately, sociologists tend to disagree, and have an awful lot to say about immanent ideas they don't understand.
Here he shares and elucidates the many failures of sociology to say anything useful or interesting about science or its ideas, or to offer cogent theories for how scientific ideas come into being from the eyes of sociology. He points out some examples of questionable thinking by sociologists trying to address why scientific ideas take the form they do.
Yet, consistent with the integrity he has exercised, he remarks that this failure does not mean it is impossible for sociology to produce valuable information, only that with its current methods it has failed to do so. This book is 43 yeas old, and from what I can tell sociology has still failed to produce anything of value in how we should think about science. It doesn't seem likely this is going to change anytime soon, given the sorts of problems sociologists are tackling today, and the equally questionable output they generate.
Laudan acknowledges that his book hasn’t seemed to answer any questions, and highlights what he thinks are some of the more poignant unanswered ones. I still think his understanding of the value and purpose and even epistemology of science is not at the level it should be for one writing critically of it, but no more so than that of other philosophers. Scientists writing for the public tend to do a better job philosophizing about science than philosophers do, but with the limitation that they are philosophizing about something which they are directly involved in, and so their perspective may be skewed, even if highly informed by experience. Philosophers have the advantage of observing science from a distance, detached and dispassionately, but with the disadvantage of not really understanding how science works or the intellectual value it produces.
Laudan puts forward many substantial ideas and counter arguments to insubstantial ones. The book doesn’t quite “shake the philosophy of science to its roots”, as Physics Today once wrote, but it does get some points for thoughtfully addressing many confusions of philosophers and sociologists, while introducing a few of its own.
Philosophy of science is something I’ve long been interested in but haven’t really given adequate attention. What examples of it I’m familiar with, aside from some of Karl Popper’s work, severely lack in merit or even a basic understanding of science. Or that's how it's always struck me. I could be wrong and seriously misunderstanding the works of philosophers of science, which is very possible. But since so much other philosophy, even the kinds with questionable output, at least makes enough sense to understand what is being said, I don't suspect that my problem with the philosophy of science is that it's somehow a more complex beast. It's by no means as complex as science is itself, yet seems somehow distant and unfamiliar with science.
Instead I get the impression that those philosophizing about science don't grasp how science works. Instead they have ideas about how it should work or how we should think of it or what makes some science better than other science or what kind of value it produces, but without connecting these ideas with science itself. They write as though they've never taken a basic science course beyond grade school, and the depth of their thought about it is totally divorced from reality.
It's like a philosopher of art ruminating on how art should be performed, what art means, and how we should evaluate the subjective merits of art, but without reconciling any of this with how art is created, what the artists themselves think, and without knowing how to paint anything. So the philosophy of science is something I'm always skeptical of, but also very interested in seeing done well. I want to like it and find it valuable, but very little of it seems to be. Perhaps my vantage point from within science makes it hard for me to objectively analyze this topic. Or maybe this is why I find science itself to be a lot more substantive than the philosophy that tries to understand it.
This book takes an interesting approach in critiquing many of the leading (at the time it was written) philosophers of science, including Feyerabend, Kuhn, Popper, and Lakatos, most of whom I was partially familiar with, and laying out the author’s own theory on how we should instead think of science or evaluating competing “research traditions”. The problem is that for most of the book, these ideas don’t seem much better stated or grounded than the ideas he is, justifiably, criticizing. And I do want to point out that of the ideas he criticized that I was already familiar with, they were very much in need of criticizing. His solutions, while better, didn't seem as big a step forward as one might like. Other times, Laudan seemed to indicate that ideas put forward by these philosophers, such as Feyeraband or Lakatos, were incomplete or suffering, but I never saw him explain why.
Laudan is clear and careful about his terminology, and for many of the ideas he looks at he makes sure to distinguish between different forms of those ideas. Take the history of science, for example. He breaks this into two categories: The actual history of science, that is, all the objective facts pertaining to how science has been conducted over the centuries, and then the History of Science, the discipline of historians piecing together this history, developing narratives, figuring out what is or isn't important to the big picture.
Larry Laudan has the strength of being driven by intellectual integrity which is constantly on display, even criticizing poorly developed defenses of ideas he seems to agree with. I appreciated this. But for too long the book feels as though it goes in circles, knocking down some disagreeable ideas and for the right reasons, proposing new definitions and criteria by which to evaluate science, but raising questions that the author fails to answer or propose solutions for. His vision of progressive science sounds good, but to my mind it isn’t spelled out clearly enough to be useful or actionable. He has equally valid thoughts on history and historiography that he does on philosophy, and his ruminations on these topics were interesting, even if they felt fruitless to me.
What ultimately made the book worth reading was the final chapter, which was extremely well done, and hits on many of the arguments and ideas introduced earlier, finally giving them a sense of importance. In this chapter Laudan discusses the sociology of science and knowledge. The discussion of immanent and non immanent ideas was fascinating. Immanent ideas in science are those explained by rational or otherwise reasonable sources that are justified scientific beliefs based on scientific insights, whereas non immanent ideas are those that are integrated from outside, culturally or socially influenced, for example. It is only the latter ideas, not the former, he argues, that sociologists can really say anything about when it comes to science. I tend to agree. Unfortunately, sociologists tend to disagree, and have an awful lot to say about immanent ideas they don't understand.
Here he shares and elucidates the many failures of sociology to say anything useful or interesting about science or its ideas, or to offer cogent theories for how scientific ideas come into being from the eyes of sociology. He points out some examples of questionable thinking by sociologists trying to address why scientific ideas take the form they do.
Yet, consistent with the integrity he has exercised, he remarks that this failure does not mean it is impossible for sociology to produce valuable information, only that with its current methods it has failed to do so. This book is 43 yeas old, and from what I can tell sociology has still failed to produce anything of value in how we should think about science. It doesn't seem likely this is going to change anytime soon, given the sorts of problems sociologists are tackling today, and the equally questionable output they generate.
Laudan acknowledges that his book hasn’t seemed to answer any questions, and highlights what he thinks are some of the more poignant unanswered ones. I still think his understanding of the value and purpose and even epistemology of science is not at the level it should be for one writing critically of it, but no more so than that of other philosophers. Scientists writing for the public tend to do a better job philosophizing about science than philosophers do, but with the limitation that they are philosophizing about something which they are directly involved in, and so their perspective may be skewed, even if highly informed by experience. Philosophers have the advantage of observing science from a distance, detached and dispassionately, but with the disadvantage of not really understanding how science works or the intellectual value it produces.
Laudan puts forward many substantial ideas and counter arguments to insubstantial ones. The book doesn’t quite “shake the philosophy of science to its roots”, as Physics Today once wrote, but it does get some points for thoughtfully addressing many confusions of philosophers and sociologists, while introducing a few of its own.
December 27, 2017
Clear perspective on science, credibly combining concepts from Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend and at the same time maintaining the rational driver of scientific progress. Furthermore the book is very readable for a non-philosopher, and provides useful insights for scientific practitioners. Not all parts are equally strong - part two doesn't have the strong structure of the first part - but the book deserves five stars, warmly recommended for those interested in the process of science.
April 11, 2023
De todos os livros que já li em filosofia das ciências, este foi o que mais gostei. Com uma escrita cativante, Laudan oferece-nos uma excelente retrospetiva histórica sobre o problema do progresso em ciência e propõe-nos uma abordagem que — arrisco esta qualificação — é genial pelo seu pragmatismo, uma vez que o pragmatismo não parece ser uma qualidade abundante entre a generalidade dos filósofos das ciências.
December 21, 2023
explication is never an easy task, but focusing on progress instead of truth is an interesting way to go about philosophy, I read this my last semester of college and cannot fully admit I was entirely checked into the book as my foot was halfway out the door, but if I studied philosophy more extensively I definitely would have had a greater appreciation.
November 20, 2021
Thorough and we'll argued, but when he was channeling Popper he tended to deny it, and when he wasn't, he tended to be unconvincing.
September 30, 2012
Necessary critiques of Lakatos and Kuhn (and many others). I feel like this work was insightful on many different levels, but that I still can't bring myself to accept the overall pragmatist position. Incidentally, I feel that it may be possible to adopt Laudan's general theory and still manage to smuggle in realism--but that may be wishful thinking on my part. One criticism: His theory of rationality (or his general schema for a theory of rationality, rather) hinges on the idea that our intuitions about scientific progress are pretty much correct (specifically, that certain instances of scientific change in history need to be assumed as rational in order to serve as a sort of basis of "fit" for any theory of rationality). I don't know how problematic that could turn out to be, but it's a pretty big assumption (even if I do share the intuition).
Oh, there's also an excellent discussion towards the end regarding the sociology of knowledge.
Oh, there's also an excellent discussion towards the end regarding the sociology of knowledge.
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November 21, 2009None
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews