Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Aim-Oriented Empiricism

TL;DR

This paper advocates aim-oriented empiricism (AOE) as a comprehensive framework synthesizing and improving upon Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos by exposing and critically examining all metaphysical assumptions in science to facilitate progress.

Contribution

The paper presents aim-oriented empiricism as a superior synthesis of Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos, offering a novel approach to criticizing and revising scientific assumptions.

Findings

AOE exposes all metaphysical assumptions to criticism.

AOE is more Popperian than Popper's falsificationism.

AOE can solve problems that Kuhn's and Lakatos's views cannot.

Abstract

In this paper I argue that aim-oriented empiricism (AOE), a conception of natural science that I have defended at some length elsewhere, is a kind of synthesis of the views of Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos, but is also an improvement over the views of all three. Whereas Popper's falsificationism protects metaphysical assumptions implicitly made by science from criticism, AOE exposes all such assumptions to sustained criticism, and furthermore focuses criticism on those assumptions most likely to need revision if science is to make progress. Even though AOE is, in this way, more Popperian than Popper, it is also, in some respects, more like the views of Kuhn and Lakatos than falsificationism is. AOE is able, however, to solve problems which Kuhn's and Lakatos's views cannot solve.