Imre Lakatos Quotes on Knowledge
Imre Lakatos’s “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” (1970) and the posthumously edited Proofs and Refutations (1976) gave late twentieth-century philosophy of science its most influential alternative to both the Popperian falsificationism Lakatos studied under at the LSE and the Kuhnian historicist framework against which his methodology of scientific research programmes was developed. The central thesis is that scientific knowledge proceeds through the historical succession of research programmes — each organized around a hard core of inviolable theoretical commitments and a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses — with the rational comparison of competing programmes carried out in terms of their progressive or degenerative problemshifts rather than the simple match of theory to fact. The framework, drawing on Hegel, Pólya, and the philosophical-mathematical tradition of his Hungarian background, shaped the contemporary debate over scientific rationality, theory comparison, and the relation between history and philosophy of science.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Science is a research programme, not an isolated theory.”
-
Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“A research programme is progressive when it predicts novel facts.”
-
Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“The history of science is the history of competing research programmes.”
-
Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Falsification alone cannot capture the rationality of science.”
-
Attributed to Imre Lakatos:
“Mathematics is created by an open process of proofs and refutations.”
-
“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.