Talk (Work in Progress): Javier Anta (MCMP)

Title:

Detecting patterns of inflationary science

Abstract:

In this talk, I aim to conceptual engineer a particular sense of the Lakatosian notion of degenerative development, namely, the one encoded in the technical concept of intellectual inflation. Following a pluralist view on scientific progress, I argue that the diachronic development of a scientific research area can be analyzed as being intellectually inflationary in a limited period if it has considerably increased its productive output (thus displaying productive progress) while the overall semantic or epistemic value of those products has not improved in a significant fashion (thus lacking progress in a semantic or epistemic sense). Then, I apply this concept to assess whether there are some intellectually inflationary patterns in the development of two areas of research: (i) information-theoretical evolutionary biology since 1961, and (ii) ensemblist non-equilibrium statistical mechanics since 1938. Finally, tracking and analyzing intellectually inflationary patterns in the history of sciences might contribute to vindicating a non-productivist picture of current scientific research.