View source for Research program

{{short description|Professional network conducting research}}
{{Use American English|date=October 2020}}
A '''research program''' ([[British English]]: '''research programme''') is a professional network of scientists conducting [[basic research]]. The term was used by [[philosophy of science|philosopher of science]] [[Imre Lakatos]] to blend and revise the [[normative]] model of science offered by [[Karl Popper]]'s ''[[The Logic of Scientific Discovery]]'' (with its idea of [[falsifiability]]) and the descriptive model of science offered by [[Thomas Kuhn]]'s ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'' (with its ideas of [[normal science]] and [[paradigm shift]]s).<ref>Imre Lakatos, auth, John Worrall & Gregory Currie, eds, [https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Methodology_of_Scientific_Research_P.html?id=RRniFBI8Gi4C ''The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers''] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)</ref> Lakatos found falsificationism impractical and often not practiced, and found normal science—where a paradigm of science, mimicking an exemplar, extinguishes differing perspectives—more [[monopoly|monopolistic]] than actual.

Lakatos found that many research programs coexisted. Each had a ''hard core'' of theories immune to revision, surrounded by a ''protective belt'' of malleable theories.<ref name=Bechtel>{{cite book |last1=Bechtel |first1=William |author-link1=William Bechtel  |title=Philosophy of science: an overview for cognitive science |date=1988 |publisher=L. Erlbaum |location=Hillsdale, New Jersey |isbn=9780805802214 |oclc=875311964 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1ZxcAgAAQBAJ}}, ch 4 "Post-positivist philosophy of science", subch "Lakatosian research programmes", pp 60-63</ref> A research programme vies against others to be most ''progressive''.<ref name=Bechtel/> Extending the research program's theories into new domains is ''theoretical progress'', and experimentally corroborating such is ''empirical progress'', always refusing falsification of the research program's hard core.<ref name=Bechtel/> A research program might ''degenerate''—lose progressiveness—but later return to progressiveness.<ref name=Bechtel/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== Examples ==
* [http://www.globalchange.gov/ United States Global Change Research Program]
* [http://wcrp.wmo.int/ World Climate Research Programme]

[[Category:Research|program]]
[[Category:Concepts in the philosophy of science]]


{{Science-philo-stub}}