Henk Tuten: Choices are directed by experience. In other words: they depend on lessons learned from earlier behavior, sense is made by sense.. Lakatos unwillingly continued the thoughts of Kuhn, the man that he criticized. He adds to paradigms the property of eternal existence, just waiting for discovery. Not a denial of paradigms, but proposing that these in limitless amounts always passively are there, and that depending on the research field it is possible that weird ones are chosen. This looks like restoring the continuity of science, in the tradition of Popper. But suddenly a totally different view can make up for a severe shock. The sudden 'discovery' can change the then present view revolutionary. That is exactly what Kuhn tried to say, and Lakatos did nothing more than mimicking using different and difficult words. The continuity he thought to have restored only exists in an endless limit, in which all visions are available. Human existence though remains limited. In Analytic math Lakatos made a statement about the behaviour of paradigms as a limit. Besides philosophy he studied physics and math. In these sciences it is not unusual as part of the research field to study such behaviour. To state that as limit water behaves as ice is not very helpful if in that limit everything is frozen and change is zero. More sence makes his criticism towards Popper, that denying statements without looking at their underlying presumptions has no real value, (though this is no surprise). His real 'value' was fanatically defending the 'refrigerator' 'rationalism', its ability to kill all not rational expression. Some Lakatos' quotes: Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime. Henk Tuten: Blind commitment to 'rationality' is not a virtue .... Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. Henk Tuten: Two of those few were Popper and Lakatos If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power. Henk Tuten: indeed, when using the 'rational' decision process democracy It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached. Henk Tuten: 'rationality reached its point of degeneration....., recession Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind. Henk Tuten: philosophy of science in 'rational way' is quite blind... The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. Henk Tuten: indeed, Kuhn considers 'rationality' as historical. The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever. Henk Tuten: Very 'rationally' succesful 'rational research' There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory. Henk Tuten: 'better' is a 'rational notion. Creative imagination is likely to find corroborating novel evidence even for the most 'absurd' programme, if the search has sufficient drive. This look-out for new confirming evidence is perfectly permissible. Scientists dream up phantasies and then pursue a highly selective hunt for new facts which fit these phantasies. This process may be described as 'science creating its own universe' (as long as one remembers that 'creating' here is used in a provocative-idiosyncratic sense). A brilliant school of scholars (backed by a rich society to finance a few well-planned tests) might succeed in pushing any fantastic programme ahead, or alternatively, if so inclined, in overthrowing any arbitrarily chosen pillar of 'established knowledge'. It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT. No experimental result can ever kill a theory: any theory can be saved from counterinstances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms. The most important such series in the growth of science are characterized by a certain continuity which connects their members. My concern is rather that Kuhn, having recognized the failure both of justificationism and falsificationism in providing rational accounts of scientific growth, seems now to fall back on irrationalism. Henk Tuten: is 'ratio' equal to TRUE, and not-ratio equal to FALSE? Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one. Progress is measured by the degree to which a problemshift is progressive, by the degree to which the series of theories leads us to the discovery of novel facts. The positive heuristic sets out a programme which lists a chain of ever more complicated models simulating reality : the scientist's attention is riveted on building his models following instructions which are laid down in the positive part of his programme. The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the skeptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics. Henk Tuten: rockhard trust in 'rationality'. For Popper scientific change is rational or at least rationally reconstructible and falls in the realm of the logic of discovery. Henk Tuten: then science in his view is also 'rational' The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies. Popper's distinction lies primarily in his having grasped the full implications of the collapse of the best-corroborated scientific theory of all times: Newtonian mechanics and the Newtonian theory of gravitation. Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime. Henk Tuten: War on Terrorism? Wisdom and intellectual integrity demanded that one must desist from unproven utterances and minimize, even in thought, the gap between speculation and established knowledge. Henk Tuten: is 'intellectual integrety' behaving 'rational'?