Research Program

A research program is not a single theory but a sequence of theories connected by a shared methodological hard core — a set of assumptions so central that abandoning them would mean abandoning the program itself. Imre Lakatos developed this concept to explain how science actually progresses: not through the falsification of individual theories, as Karl Popper claimed, but through the evaluation of whole research trajectories. A program is judged not by whether any particular theory within it is refuted, but by whether its problem-solving strategy generates novel predictions or merely defends its core with ad hoc adjustments.

The systems-theoretic insight is that research programs are self-reinforcing dynamical systems. Their hard cores act as attractors in theory space, drawing in resources, talent, and institutional support. A degenerating research programme is one that has entered a basin of attraction from which escape becomes increasingly costly — not because its theories are false, but because the network of commitments around them has become too dense to unwind.