Imre Lakatos Quotes

Hungary, Mathematician
November 9, 1922 – February, 2, 1974.

Imre Lakatos (UK: , US: ; Hungarian: Lakatos Imre [ˈlɒkɒtoʃ ˈimrɛ]; November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) was 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.

Also known as Philosopher, University Teacher

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

Imre Lakatos
Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

Imre Lakatos

If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.

Imre Lakatos
- Power
- Truth
- Science
Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Imre Lakatos
The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology.

Imre Lakatos
- Point
- Between
- Technical
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.

Imre Lakatos
- Power
- Research
- Point
Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.

Imre Lakatos
- Think
- Knowledge
- Results
Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.

Imre Lakatos
- Theory
- Experiment
- Naive

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.

Imre Lakatos
- Positive
- Ocean
- Confused
Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.

Imre Lakatos
- Character
- Growth
- Facts
There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

Imre Lakatos
- Better
- Theory
- Before
For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific theory T is falsified if and only if another theory T' has been proposed with the following characteristics :

Imre Lakatos
Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.

Imre Lakatos
- Commitment
- Virtue
- Blind
Where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.

Imre Lakatos