Success Quote by Imre Lakatos

Calling Newton a "research programme" is Lakatos slipping a philosopher's knife under the romantic story of lone-genius discovery. He is not praising a single theory so much as a durable engine for making sense of the world. In Lakatos's terms, Newtonian gravitation isn't just a set of equations; it's a structured package: a "hard core" (universal gravitation, laws of motion) protected by a "belt" of adjustable assumptions that scientists can tweak when reality resists. That's the subtext of "successful": success is measured over time by a programme's ability to generate novel predictions and to absorb anomalies without collapsing into ad hoc excuses.

The line is also a tactical move in a larger fight. Lakatos is writing in the shadow of Popper and Kuhn, trying to rescue scientific rationality from two opposite caricatures: Popper's clean falsificationism (one decisive refutation and you're done) and Kuhn's sociological picture of paradigms that shift more like fashion than argument. Newton is his exhibit A because it lets him show how science actually behaves when it's working: it doesn't abandon its core commitments at the first discrepancy; it develops. The famous "anomalies" (irregularities in planetary motion, later Mercury) didn't immediately sink Newton. For centuries the programme stayed "progressive" by producing calculations, instruments, and further questions that paid off.

The word "possibly" matters, too: it's a philosopher's hedge that signals method, not worship. Lakatos admires Newton because Newton exemplifies a standard for judging scientific change without pretending scientists are either perfectly logical machines or merely members of a trend-following tribe.