2 articles on political science

Terence Ball, in his article "From Paradigms to Research Programs: Toward a Post-Kuhnian Political Science," is trying to do two things. First, he wants to show that Thomas S. Kuhn's ideas have been misunderstood by political scientists. Second, he wants to show that the ideas of Imre Lakatos are more useful and "satisfactory" than the ideas of Kuhn.

Ball writes that "Kuhn's reception by political scientists has in the past decade gone through three more or less distinct phases" (152). The first two phases were uncritical acceptance. Political scientists saw Kuhn's ideas as giving a new perspective on the science. Kuhn showed that political scientists had been looking at their field from different "paradigms" which kept them from talking in the same way about the same subjects. However, "The only trouble was that no one agreed as to whether the emerging paradigm [which would be used by them all] was to be interest-group analysis, structural functionalism" (152-153) or some other paradigm. Each group saw in Kuhn what they wanted to see to support their own approach. The third phase was to reject Kuhn:

Frightened by the specter of epistemological relativism, political scientists are nowadays tempted to resort to pre-Kuhnian cliches about objectivity, testability and falsification, and the like. This temptation . . . should be resisted, inasmuch as it represents a retreat to the comfortable---albeit questionable---p

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/or methodological falsificationists; quite the contrary, both are alike in holding that tenacity in defending a theory is very nearly a crime against science. Against this view, Lakatos argues that the history of science is the story of bold conjectures boldly---and tenaciously---defended against apparently `decisive' counterevidence (165). The point of science, says Bell, is to "enable us to predict novel facts even as they explain old anomalies" (165). Lakatos' approach lets scientists do this in a more effective way that previous approaches. Lakatos gives scientists a way to look at a theory in a more rational way, analyzing its usefulness without having to completely accept or reject it. Analyzing a theory should be based not on the whole theory but on the "adjustments" that the theory goes through: The critic must ask: Are these adjustments `progressive' or `degenerating' ones within the context of this particular research program? That is, are these adjustments content-increasing or content-decreasing ones? Do these adjustments enable us to predict novel facts as they explain old anomalies? (165). Therefore, Lakatos changes the whole way of looking at and judging a theory or series of theories. His way is more tenacious,
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Approximate Word count = 1925
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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