Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan: Applications in the history of physics and psychology.

ABSTRACT. Kuhnians depict the history of any scientific discipline as a succession of incommensurable paradigms. Empirical work done in one paradigm is of little relevance to another, and comparisons of paradigms on such familiar grounds as experimental adequacy are said to be inconclusive. Different paradigms do not agree on what constitutes knowledge or the meaning of truth. The recent work of other philosophers of science, such as Lakatos and Laudan, however, leads to expectations about the history of a scientific discipline that are quite different from Kuhns. In this article, the authors show that Lakatoss and Laudans accounts provide more veridical analyses than popularized Kuhnian versions when applied to episodes in the history of physics