Scientific Progress

The problem of scientific progress asks in what sense, if any, science improves over time.

Definition

Scientific progress is improvement in science over time; competing accounts identify the relevant improvement with approach to truth (or verisimilitude), increased problem-solving capacity, greater empirical success, or accumulation of knowledge and understanding.

Scope

This topic covers the main accounts of progress — as accumulation of truth or verisimilitude, as growth in problem-solving effectiveness, as increasing empirical adequacy, and as growth of knowledge or understanding — together with the challenge that revolutions and incommensurability pose to any cumulative picture.

Core questions

• Does science progress toward truth, or only toward better problem-solving?
• Can verisimilitude be coherently defined and measured?
• Do revolutions interrupt or constitute progress?
• Is understanding a distinct dimension of scientific progress?

Key concepts

• verisimilitude
• problem-solving effectiveness
• accumulation of truth
• epistemic versus functional accounts
• understanding

Key theories

Problem-solving account

Laudan analyses progress as an increase in a tradition's effectiveness at solving empirical and conceptual problems, independent of truth.

Verisimilitude (truthlikeness) account

Niiniluoto develops a realist account on which progress consists in successive theories getting closer to the truth.

Revolution-based challenge

Kuhn's picture of non-cumulative revolutions challenges the idea that science simply accumulates truths across paradigm change.

History

Popper proposed verisimilitude as a measure of progress, but his formal definition failed in 1974, prompting alternatives. Laudan's 1977 problem-solving model detached progress from truth, while Niiniluoto's 1984 work revived a realist truthlikeness account; debate continues over epistemic, semantic, and functional definitions of progress.

Debates

Truth-based versus function-based progress

Realists like Niiniluoto tie progress to approaching truth, while Laudan and instrumentalists tie it to expanding problem-solving capacity, disputing whether truth is needed to make sense of progress.

Key figures

• Larry Laudan
• Ilkka Niiniluoto
• Thomas Kuhn
• Karl Popper

Seminal works

• laudan1977
• niiniluoto1984

Frequently asked questions

Why is defining 'verisimilitude' difficult?

Popper tried to define truthlikeness as more truths and fewer falsehoods, but Tichy and Miller showed in 1974 that on his definition no false theory can be closer to the truth than another. Repairing the notion of verisimilitude has been a major technical project ever since.