Imre Lakatos
Edited by Howard Sankey (University of Melbourne)
About this topic
Summary | Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) was a Hungarian philosopher of science and mathematics who spent the latter part of his career working in Britain, where he held a position at the London School of Economics. He is best-known in the philosophy of science for his proposal of a methodology of scientific research programmes, which is in some respects an attempt to form a synthesis of Karl Popper's falsificationism and Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific theory change. According to Lakatos, scientists work in research programmes which contain an inviolable hard core of laws and a revisable protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. Research programmes may be appraised on the basis of whether they make progress. A programme is said to be progressive if it is both theoretically and empirically progressive. A programme is theoretically progressive if a stage in the research programme leads to at least one novel prediction, and empirically progressive if at least some of its novel predictions are confirmed. Scientists are able to rationally choose between competing research programmes by determining whether a programme is progressive. Programmes which fail to be progressive are degenerative or stagnating and are to be rejected. |
Key works | The classic statement of Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programmes is 'Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes'. For Lakatos's proposals on how to employ the history of science to evaluate theories of scientific method, see his 'History of Science and its Rational Reconstructions'. These and other papers by Lakatos are most easily found in his collected papers The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes and Mathematics, Science and Epistemology. Lakatos's best-known work in the philosophy of mathematics is Proofs and Refutations. In Progress and its Problems, Larry Laudan suggests that hard cores should be taken to be subject to modification, rather than being treated as inviolable. In Against Method, Feyerabend argues that Lakatos's methodology is "anarchism in disguise", since it does not tell scientists that they must abandon a degenerating in favor of a progressive research programme. This issue is discussed at length in Alan Musgrave's paper, 'Method or Madness'. |
Introductions | See chapter nine of Alan Chalmers' What is this thing called science?. See also Brendan Larvor's book Lakatos: An Introduction |
Show all references
Related categories
Siblings:
- G. E. M. Anscombe (151)
- J. L. Austin (273)
- A. J. Ayer (259)
- C. D. Broad (638)
- Rudolf Carnap (1,397 | 301)
- Roderick Chisholm (281)
- Donald Davidson (949)
- Paul Feyerabend (440)
- Philippa Foot (6)
- Gottlob Frege (2,489 | 69)
- Nelson Goodman (395)
- Paul Grice (18)
- Thomas Kuhn (914)
- David Lewis (413)
- G. E. Moore (655)
- Derek Parfit (19)
- Karl Popper (1,957 | 56)
- W. V. O. Quine (1,354)
- John Rawls (2,526)
- Bertrand Russell (3,559)
- Gilbert Ryle (290)
- Wilfrid Sellars (690)
- P. F. Strawson (394)
- Alfred Tarski (275)
- Bernard Williams (756)
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (8,294)
- Logical Empiricism (590)
- 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Misc (348)
Jobs in this area
420 found
Order:
1 filter applied
|
Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Create an account to enable off-campus access through your institution's proxy server. Monitor this page
Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it:
Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Esa Diaz-Leon Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |