Editing Imre Lakatos (section)

===Rational reconstructions of the history of science===
In his 1970 article "History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions"<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |author=Lakatos, Imre |date=1970 |title=History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions |journal=PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association |volume=1970 |pages=91–136 |doi=10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1970.495757 |jstor=495757 |s2cid=145197122 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/495757}}</ref> Lakatos proposed a dialectical historiographical meta-method for evaluating different theories of scientific method, namely by means of their comparative success in explaining the actual [[history of science]] and [[scientific revolution]]s on the one hand, whilst on the other providing a historiographical framework for rationally reconstructing the history of science as anything more than merely inconsequential rambling. The article started with his now renowned dictum "Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind".

However, neither Lakatos himself nor his collaborators ever completed the first part of this dictum by showing that in any scientific revolution the great majority of the relevant scientific community converted just when Lakatos's criterion – one programme successfully predicting some novel facts whilst its competitor degenerated – was satisfied. Indeed, for the historical case studies in his 1968 article "Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes"<ref name=La68/> he had openly admitted as much, commenting: "In this paper it is not my purpose to go on seriously to the second stage of comparing [[rational reconstruction]]s with actual history for any lack of historicity."