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2.
With the concept of a
research program Imre
Lakatos
(1922-1974).
a
British philosopher of
science with high
reputation in the Sixties.
suggested a description of
the research process which
should convey how
scientific development
occurs. At that time, his
concept was developed in
reaction to the struggling
ideas how sciences
factually evolve Hence he
took a mid-position
between the concept
mainly represented by Sir
Karl Popper
(1902-1994)
who hold for a rather linear
development, based on the
scientific strategy of
conjectures and
refutations, and Thomas S.
Kuhn (1922-1996)
who
hold for a revolutionary
development of sciences.
based on his observations
that theories proved to be
wrong are given up at
once.
concept of development has to consider social, economical and
ecological aspects as well
(Bundesministerium für Umwelt, n.d.).
But
this claim implies that divergent interests have to be optimized and
reconciled. The political model of sustainability therefore necessarily
asks for scientific support which in fact involves pure science as well as
problem-focused science. This plurality raises a few scientific prob¬
lems on which we will focus on the next paragraph.
Political interests as mentioned above and the underlying social needs
are important constraints to mountain research
:
it gets more public
attention which on the one hand raises the financial support but on the
other hand arouses almost unfullfillable expectations.
Given this strong pressure from the non-scientific context it is not
surprising to find in the general goals of the workshop:
"(...)
to discuss
the usefulness and the relevance of research devoted to mountain
regions around the word, as well as the methods employed." (see
Invitation to the International Mountain Research Workshop, February
2000,
part Workshop topics
:
Mountain regions
-
a research subject?).
The necessity for this intended reflexion on the actual shape and the
status of mountain research first of all shows that even on the part of
scientists, mountain research is far from being understood as a strong
disciplinary research program in the sense of Lakatos (Lakatos,
1970).
Even if Funnell in his poster (See p.
198)
writes about a "current
agenda that claims that mountain areas need to be the subject of a
distinctive development programme in order to attain appropriate envi¬
ronmental and social goals", this does not correspond to what Lakatos
meant by a research program
2
. Therefore a complex of (disciplinary)
fixed hypotheses and heuristic arguments, and the determination of
what would be accepted as an accurate description, and what facets
were in need of explanation or were capable of explanation would at
least be necessary. The advantage of such a program would be a
certain stability for research activities, and an obstacle against denial
and objection. But as Herve Gumuchian determined in
1996,
in moun¬
tain research important key fields were still not able to present coher¬
ent theories for phenomena they are describing (Gumuchian
1996,
149),
hence there is no basis upon which to formulate such a coherent
and consistent research program for mountain research.
Summarizing, we have to mention two important facts concerning
mountain research
:
(a) research on the topic of mountain regions
seems less motivated by scientific reasons than by fundamental
changes at the political and economic levels, e.g. globalisation, with its
strong implications on natural resources and cultural values as a basis
of social identity
;
(b) mountain research is not a coherent and consis¬
tent scientific program which would give strong indications about
further tasks, future problems to resolve, and permitted methodological
skills.
Concerning the frame of mountain research on a global level it can be
said that there has not been a fundamental change in the last eight to
ten years
—
at least as far as the region of European Alps are
concerned. Already in
1989
a so-called Alpine resolution
—
which two
years later led to the Alpine Convention
—
formulated the urgent need
for research on topics related to the European Alps (see Berning
1992,
3/4).
Hence, it can be concluded that research focussing on either natural,
social or cultural topics related to mountains is highly valued on the
political level, but on the scientific level some specific scientific prereq¬
uisites which would enable scientists to start a coherent and consistent
research program are lacking.
110 -
International Mountain Research Workshop. Autrans
2000
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