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Worrall, John. "Fix It and Be Damned: A Reply to Laudan." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40, no. 3 (1989): 376-88.
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|Last Name=Laudan
|Summary='''Larry Laudan''' is an American philosopher of science who greatly shaped the debates in the field from the late 1970s till the mid 1990s. He wrote many works notably, Progress and its Problems (1977), Science and Hypothesis (1981) and Science and Values (1984). Larry Laudan’s most notable contribution is the idea that scientific methods change, representing a departure from the tradition of Kuhnian “paradigms.” Laudan presents his reticulated model as an explanation for how methods can change and he defended this view from the criticisms made by notable colleagues like John Worrall.
|Historical Context=Prior to Laudan’s contribution to the discourse on scientific change, the Kuhnian tradition was the prevailing approach to the topic. In this preceding tradition, methods were seen as fixed to the paradigm in which they were utilized. Theories were also seemingly fixed to the paradigm in which they were discovered.
|Major Contributions='''Laudan on the Changeability of Method'''
The reticulated model of scientific change is a system where methods, theories 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.
To demonstrate the incompatibility that two goals can have let, 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.
The model does not specify any way to determine which goal is the “right” one. Laudan suggests that “There is no single “right” goal for inquiry because it is evidently legitimate to engage in inquiry for a wide range of reasons and with a wide variety of purpose.” Furthermore the reticulated model allows for progress in science. Progress being, “a certain sequence of theories [that] move scientists closer to realizing or achieving a certain goal states.” As long as progress, relative to goals, occurs then it can be said to progressing. However, science does not have to progress. Laudan writes, “[…] there is nothing that compels us to make our judgements of the progressiveness of a theory choice depends upon our acquiescence in the aims of science held by those who forged that choice in the first place.” Laudan believed methods were changeable because they were dictated by the individual goals of those who were actually doing science, which are various. Implications that can be drawn from the ever changing goals of science are the apparent progressiveness of science is dependent on the value metric of the given scientific community in question.
|Criticism=In 1988 John Worrall responded to Laudan’s Science and Values in a work titled The Value of Fixed Methodology (1988.) Worrall seeks to demonstrate how the reticulated model is incorrect by stating that when Laudan claims, methodological change to be real, he means only explicit methodological change is real. Implicit methodology to Worrall remains static. Worrall believed that, should methodological change truly be implicit, then the reticulated model could not provide an explanation for scientific change. If methodological change was purely explicit then it would not conflict with the hierarchical view and thus the reticulated model is not necessary.
TODO: Add these resources ass proper Bibliographic Records
Donovan, Arthur L., ed. Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988.
Laudan, Larry. "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40, no. 3 (1989): 369-75.
Laudan, Larry. Progress and its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Laudan, Larry. Science and Values: The Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific Debate. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Worrall, John. "The Value of a Fixed Method." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39, no. 2 (1988): 263-75.
Worrall, John. "Fix It and Be Damned: A Reply to Laudan." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40, no. 3 (1989): 376-88.|Related Topics=Mechanism of Scientific Change, Mechanism of Method Employment, Mechanism of Theory Acceptance,
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