‘Mob psychology’ – that is how Imre Lakatos (1922–74) caricatured Kuhn's account of science. ‘Scientific method (or “logic of discovery”), conceived as the discipline of rational appraisal of scientific theories – and of criteria of progress – vanishes. We may of course still try to explain changes in “paradigms” in terms of social psychology. This is … Kuhn's way’ (I, p. 31). Lakatos utterly opposed what he claimed to be Kuhn's reduction of the philosophy of science to sociology. He thought that it left no place for the sacrosanct scientific values of truth, objectivity, rationality and reason.

Although this is a travesty of Kuhn the resulting ideas are important. The two current issues of philosophy of science are epistemological (rationality) and metaphysical (truth and reality). Lakatos seems to be talking about the former. Indeed he is universally held to present a new theory of method and reason, and he is admired by some and criticized by others on that score. If that is what Lakatos is up to, his theory of rationality is bizarre. It does not help us at all in deciding what it is reasonable to believe or do now. It is entirely backward-looking. It can tell us what decisions in past science were rational, but cannot help us with the future. In so far as Lakatos's essays bear on the future they are a bustling blend of platitudes and prejudices. Yet the essays remain compelling. Hence I urge that they are about something other than method and rationality.