Abstract

The proposed comment to the paper by W. Lynch provides another indirect argument in favor of the thesis about Lakatos’s hidden Marxist roots. The methodology of research programmes and the sociology of scientific knowledge (social epistemology) share a common object of criticism, and a constant opponent. Lakatos calls him the naïve falsificationist while a social epistemologist dubs him a metaphysical realist, or fact-objectivist. Both criticized the non-critical trust in scientific theories and facts as well as their reification though using different means: the internal dialectic of science’s development and the socio-communicative interpretation of scientific knowledge. Still, the differences between them like the differences between Lakatos’s and Feyerabend’s approaches are two ways of expressing the similar position based on acceptance of some non-dogmatic Marxist ideas.