Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatoswas a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his methodology of scientific research programmes...
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth9 November 1922
Imre Lakatos quotes about
clash mere point technical
The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology.
commitment intellectual blind
Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.
numbers criticism doe
Mathematics does not grow through a monotonous increase of the number of indubitably established theorems but through the incessant improvement of guesses by speculation and criticism, by the logic of proofs and refutations.
science achievement progress
The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.
mazes may theory
It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT.
heuristics research rivals
It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached.