Lakatos’s methodology and its application to logic research programs: a comparative study

Imre Lakatos’s methodology of research programs (Lakatos(1978)) is renowned for describing the evolution of scientific theories through a combination of heuristic mechanisms that guide their development. Various attempts to apply Lakatos’s framework to research programs in logic and mathematics are found in Priest (1989), Aberdein and Read (2009), and Hallett (1979a). The paper draws on Lakatosian assessments of progressive and degenerating mathematical theories found in Hallett (1979a) to advance a heuristic proposal for studying the progress and development of logical theories. The upshot is a characterization of Lakatos’s framework as applied to logical theories, along with a defense of a holistic approach that acknowledges the iterative relationship between empirical input and logical refinement during the process of development of progressive logical theories.