Imre Lakatos

Philosopher of science best known for "research programme" methodology — distinguishing a progressive research programme, which keeps predicting novel facts, from a degenerating one, which only patches its theory to accommodate what is already known. Matters to this vault as one of several philosophers of science (alongside Quine, Hesse, and Feyerabend) cited for the view that evidence alone cannot settle between empirically-equivalent theories — something else, an extra-evidential criterion, has to do the choosing (claim-underdetermination-missing-ingredient-is-extra-evidential-criteria).

References

• claim-underdetermination-missing-ingredient-is-extra-evidential-criteria
• Open question: question-arbitration-as-missing-ingredient-across-underdetermination
• 2026-10-12: Dreyfus & Stuart Dreyfus's 1988 Daedalus essay applies his "degenerating research programme" framework to characterize classical AI's historical stall — named in the essay but not read in full this session, so not promoted to its own claim-note (saved lead on the capture at 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-12-hop-dreyfus-minsky-husserl-frames-bridge.md). (claim-dreyfus-1988-commonsense-knowledge-problem-blocked-ai-progress)