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===Later Views===
In the early 1980s, Laudan comes to realize that there is no such thing as a universal and unchangeable method of science. One early indication of this transition is found in the discussion of [[Dudley Shapere]]'s [[Shapere (1980)|''The Character of Scientific Change (1980)'']]. In that paper, Shapere defended the idea that methods of science change as our theories about the world change. In his comment on Shapere paper, Laudan seems to appreciate that methods of science are changeable while still arguing that there must exist "persistent metacriteria for the choice of criteria".[[CiteRef::Shapere (1980)|p. 247]]. However, in his [[Laudan (1984)|''Science and Values (1984)'']], Laudan presents his '''reticulated model''' which is an attempt to explain how methods of science change in a rational fashion. At the time, this view was against the commonly held belief that some core methods of science remain unchangeable. This lead to an important debate with [[John Worrall]] (see section ''Criticism'').
In Laudan's reticulated model of scientific change, theories, methods, and aims of science are all changeable. One aspect of having changeable theories, methods, and aims is that many different cognitive goals will satisfy the model. Laudan believes this is possible because there are many different reasons or purposes for why someone would want to engage in scientific inquiry and because of this there must be many different goals for studying science. Another aspect of having multiple goals is that the goals which meet the requirements of the model may be mutually incompatible. For instance, consider two scientists possessing different goals, Goal 1 and Goal 2. Goal 1 states that science is done to understand nature. Goal 2 states that science is done to prove nature doesn’t exist. Now Goal 2 is obviously rather extreme but Goal 2 suggests that nature is not real, where Goal 1 assumes natures existence. These two views are incompatible as they both strive to prove opposite claims. One cannot prove nature doesn’t exist if it is assumed nature does exist.
