VII. Polish initiative regarding energy policy within the EU and Polish energy
7.1 Energy solidarity in the Treaty of Lisbon and the Energy Union
In his seminal 1970 essay, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” Lakatos joined the debate between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn on how science develops, and how that trajectory should be appraised.1 Popper argued that “the
1. Imre Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 91–
196. For brief biographical details on Lakatos, see John Worrall, “Imre Lakatos, 1922–1974: Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science,” in R.S.
Cohen, P.K. Feyerabend, and M.W. Wartofsky, eds., Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976), pp. 1–8; Roger E. Backhouse, “Imre Lakatos,” in John B. Davis, D. Wade Hands, and Uskali Maki, eds., The
T
development of ‘science’ is marked by ‘progress’, whereas ‘non-science’ evolves without becoming ‘better’ in any sense of the term.”2 Popper’s view was that in order for science to improve, scholars need to frame propositions in ways that allow them to be confronted and falsified with empirical observations.3 Falsification, however, is not enough to distinguish science from non-science. Popper recognized that scientists could make trivial changes to their propositions so as to avoid contradiction by known empirical evidence, but this did not mean that there had been “progress.” Accordingly, he bolstered the criterion of falsification with “methodological rules that forbid what he first called ‘ad-hoc auxiliary assumptions,’ later ‘conventionalist stratagems,’ and finally ‘immunizing stratagems’.”4
Handbook of Economic Methodology (Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1998), pp. 270–272; Brendan Larvor, Lakatos: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 1–7; and Jancis Long, “Lakatos in Hungary,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 28, No. 2 (June 1998), pp. 244–311.
2. Mark Blaug, “Why I am Not a Constructivist: Confessions of an Unrepentant Popperian,” in Roger E. Backhouse, ed., New Directions in Economic Methodology (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 109–110. See also Larvor, Lakatos: An Introduction, p. 47.
3. Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 5th ed. (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 36–37, 46. See also Imre Lakatos, “The Role of Crucial Experiments in Science,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1974), 310–312; Frederick Suppe, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,” in Frederick Suppe, ed., The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1977), p. 167; Paul Diesing, How Does Social Science Work?
Reflections on Practice (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), pp. 31–
32; Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics: Or How Economists Explain (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 14; Arthur Donovan, Larry Laudan, and Rachel Laudan, Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change, 2d ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 4–5; and Jarrett Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 38.
4. Blaug, The Methodology of Economics, p. 19. See also Bruce J. Caldwell, “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes in Economics: Criticisms and Conjectures,” in G.K. Shaw, ed., Economics, Culture and Education: Essays in Honor of Mark Blaug (Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1991), p. 96.
Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, provided a radically different view of science and scientific progress.5 He argued that scientific advance does not, as Popper claimed, consist of the gradual accumulation of ever truer theories that, at any given time, have yet to be falsified by failing to pass critical tests. Kuhn suggested that mature sciences were characterized by dominant paradigms, which determined both the trajectory of puzzle-solving
“normal science” and provided paradigm-specific criteria for deciding whether such activity is successful or not. In contrast to normal science, said Kuhn, “revolutionary science” occurs when scientific communities switch between paradigms. This is typically triggered when the dominant paradigm becomes mired in increasingly damaging empirical anomalies.6 Kuhn argued that, because paradigms are based on competing world views, and are consequently incommensurable, the decision to discard one paradigm for another cannot be based on
“external” objective criteria. Rather, he wrote, the choice “between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life.” For Kuhn, “there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant [scientific] community.”7
Popper took an intense, and at least partly political, dislike to Kuhn’s view of science.8 Popper believed that a virtuous society tolerated dissent,9 and that because a scientific community was characterized by vigorous mutual criticism, it was the finest example of such an open society. This was completely antithetical to Kuhn’s
5. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
6. Suppe, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,”
pp. 143–144; and Roger E. Backhouse, “Paradigm/Normal Science,” in Davis, Hands and Maki, The Handbook of Economic Methodology, pp. 352–354, at 352.
7. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 94. See also Suppe, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,” pp. 149–150.
8. Karl Popper, “Normal Science and its Dangers,” in Lakatos and Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, pp. 51–58, at 52–53. See also Deborah G.
Mayo, Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 22.
9. Diesing, How Does Social Science Work? p. 34.
suggestion that science was, in effect, nothing more nor less than what the powers-that-be said it was.10
Lakatos had similar concerns, and sought to “develop a theory of scientific method which was sufficiently subtle to cope with the detail of the actual history of science and yet sufficiently rationalistic to resist the political dangers presented by Kuhn.”11 Lakatos’s solution bor-rowed elements from both Popper and Kuhn, but both in this juxtaposition, and in its layering of additional features, it provided a different approach to describing and appraising scientific theories.12
Although Lakatos’s 1970 essay is often considered his definitive statement, it left plenty of room—to put it politely—for his supporters and critics to debate and refine the contents of the methodology. As Mark Blaug notes:
[Lakatos] is not an easy author to pin down to a precise interpretation. His tendency to make vital points in footnotes, to proliferate labels for different intellectual positions, to coin new phrases and expressions, and to refer back and forth to his own writings—as if it were impossible to understand any part of them without understanding the whole—stands in the way of ready comprehension.13
10. Suppe, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,”
p. 170; and Larvor, Lakatos: An Introduction, p. 45.
11. Larvor, Lakatos: An Introduction, pp. 45–46.
12. Interestingly, the resemblance was such that Kuhn would later claim that Lakatos had merely relabeled his approach. See Thomas S. Kuhn, “Reflections on my Critics,” in Lakatos and Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, p. 256; Thomas Kuhn, “Notes on Lakatos,” in Roger C. Buck and Robert S. Cohen, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, PSA 1970, Vol. 8 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1971), pp. 137–146; and Diesing, How Does Social Science Work? p. 61. Other scholars who discuss the similarities and differences between Lakatos’s approach and Popper’s include Mark Blaug, “Methodology of Scientific Research Programs,” in Davis, Hands and Maki, The Handbook of Economic Methodology, pp. 304–307; and Elie Zahar, “The Popper-Lakatos Controversy,” Fundamenta Scientiae, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1982), pp. 21–54.
13. Blaug, The Methodology of Economics, p. 32, note 24. This lack of clarity has not gone unnoticed by political scientists. Stephen Van Evera, for example, notes that “Lakatos’s arguments are well-hidden in tortured prose that gives
Lakatosians and their critics have advanced, restated, and argued at length about the contents of the methodology.14 Accordingly, its employment requires that scholars first make several predicate choices among the various interpretations of its components. Once these selections have been made, the resulting version of Lakatos’s methodology may reflect, but certainly will not exhaust, mainstream Lakatosian understandings. In the remainder of this section we first provide such a customary account, before proceeding to discuss an important area of disagreement.