Imre Lakatos Quotes
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian-British philosopher of mathematics and science. After surviving the Second World War in the Hungarian Communist underground and later being imprisoned by the same regime, he fled to England in 1956 and joined the London School of Economics, where he taught for the rest of his life. The quotes below are attributed to Imre Lakatos, organized by topic.
Browse Imre Lakatos by topic
Imre Lakatos on Happiness
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“For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific theory T is falsified if and only if another theory T' has been proposed with the following characteristics : (1) T' has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T; (2) T' explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is included (within the limits of observable error) in the content of T'; and (3) some of the excess content of T' is corroborated.”
Lakatos (1978, p. 31) cited in: Jean Pierre Colson (1989) Krashens Monitortheorie . p. 40.
Imre Lakatos on Knowledge
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Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Science is a research programme, not an isolated theory.”
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Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“A research programme is progressive when it predicts novel facts.”
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Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“The history of science is the history of competing research programmes.”
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Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Falsification alone cannot capture the rationality of science.”
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Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Mathematics is created by an open process of proofs and refutations.”
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“Kuhn as does Popper rejects the idea that science grows by accumulation of eternal truths.. But while according to Popper science is ‘revolution in permanence’, and criticism the heart of the scientific enterprise, according to Kuhn revolution is exceptional and, indeed, extra-scientific, and criticism is, in ‘normal’ times, anathema... The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical”
Imre Lakatos (1974) " From Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge ". as cited in: Thora Margareta Bertilsson (2009) Peirce's Theory of Inquiry and Beyond . p. 41. -
“Where theory lags behind the facts , we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.”
Imre Lakatos (1978, p. 6), cited in: Vernon L. Smith (1989), "Theory, experiment and economics ." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 3 (1): 168. -
“For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific theory T is falsified if and only if another theory T' has been proposed with the following characteristics : (1) T' has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T; (2) T' explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is includ”
Lakatos (1978, p. 31) cited in: Jean Pierre Colson (1989) Krashens Monitortheorie . p. 40. -
“For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge ... 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. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced.”
p. 92 as cited in: Anthony C. Thiselton (2007) The Hermeneutics of Doctrine . p. 166. -
“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.”
p. 119.
Imre Lakatos on Politics
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“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.”
p. 68.
Imre Lakatos on Virtue
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“Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.”
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