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Imre LakatosFirst published Mon Apr 4, 2016

Imre Lakatos (1922–1974) was a Hungarian-born philosopher ofmathematics and science who rose to prominence in Britain, having fledhis native land in 1956 when the Hungarian Uprising was suppressed bySoviet tanks. He was notable for his anti-formalist philosophy ofmathematics (where “formalism” is not just the philosophy of Hilbert andhis followers but also comprises logicism and intuitionism) and for his“Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” or MSRP, a radicalrevision of Popper’s Demarcation Criterion between science and non-science which gave rise to a novel theory of scientific rationality.

Although he lived and worked in London, rising to the post of Professor ofLogic at the London School of Economics (LSE), Lakatos never became aBritish citizen, but died a stateless person. Despite the star-studded arrayof academic lords and knights who were willing to testify on his behalf,neither MI5 nor the Special Branch seem to have trusted him, and no lessa person than Roy Jenkins, the then Home Secretary, signed off on therefusal to naturalize him. (See Bandy 2009: ch. 16, which includes thetranscripts of successive interrogations.)

Nonetheless, Lakatos’s influence, particularly in the philosophy of science,has been immense. According to Google Scholar, by the 25th of January2015, that is, just twenty-five days into the new year, thirty-three papershad been published citing Lakatos in that year alone, a citation rate ofover one paper per day. Introductory texts on the Philosophy of Sciencetypically include substantial sections on Lakatos, some admiring, somecritical, and many an admixture of the two (see for example Chalmers2013 and Godfrey-Smith 2003). The premier prize for the best book in thePhilosophy of Science (funded by the foundation of a wealthy and

1

academically distinguished disciple, Spiro Latsis) is named in his honour.Moreover, Lakatos is one of those philosophers whose influence extendswell beyond the confines of academic philosophy. Of the thirty-threepapers citing Lakatos published in the first twenty-five days of 2015, atmost ten qualify as straight philosophy. The rest are devoted to such topicsas educational theory, international relations, public policy research (withspecial reference to the development of technology), informatics, designscience, religious studies, clinical psychology, social economics, politicaleconomy, mathematics, the history of physics and the sociology of thefamily. Thus Imre Lakatos was very much more than a philosophers’philosopher.

First, we discuss Lakatos’s life in relation to his works. Lakatos’sHungarian career has now become a big issue in the critical literature. Thisis partly because of disturbing facts about Lakatos’s early life that haveonly come to light in the West since his death, and partly because of adispute between the “Hungarian” and the “English” interpreters ofLakatos’s thought, between those writers (not all of them Magyars) whotake the later Lakatos to be much more of a Hegelian (and perhaps muchmore of a disciple of György Lukács) than he liked to let on, and thosewho take his Hegelianism to be an increasingly residual affair, not muchmore, in the end, than a habit of “coquetting” with Hegelian expressions(Marx, Capital: 103). Just as there are analytic Marxists who think thatMarx’s thought can be rationally reconstructed without the Hegeliancoquetry and dialectical Marxists who think that it cannot, so also thereare analytic Lakatosians who think that Lakatos’s thought can be largelyreconstructed without the Hegelian coquetry and dialectical Lakatosianswho think that it cannot (see for instance Kadvany 2001 and Larvor 1998).Obviously, we cannot settle the matter in an Encyclopedia entry but wehope to say enough to illuminate the issue. (Spoiler alert: so far as thePhilosophy of Science is concerned, we tend to favor the English

Imre Lakatos

2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

interpretation. We are more ambivalent with respect to the Philosophy ofMathematics.)

Secondly we discuss Lakatos’s big ideas, the two contributions thatconstitute his chief claims to fame as a philosopher, before moving on(thirdly) to a more detailed discussion of some of his principal papers. Weconclude with a section on the Feyerabend/Lakatos Debate. Lakatos was aprovocative and combative thinker, and it falsifies his thought to present itas less controversial (and perhaps less outrageous) than it actually was.

Note: In referring to Lakatos’s chief works (and to a couple of Popper’s)we have employed a set of acronyms rather than the name/date system,hoping that this will be more perspicuous to readers. The acronyms areexplained in the Bibliography.

1. Life1.1 A Tale of Two Lakatoses1.2 Life and Works: The Third World and the Second1.3 From Stalinist Revolutionary to Methodologist of Science

2. Lakatos’s Big Ideas2.1 Against Formalism in Mathematics2.2 Improving on Popper in the Philosophy of Science

3. Works3.1 Proofs and Refutations (1963–4, 1976)3.2 “Regress” and “Renaissance”3.3 “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic” (1968)3.4 “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific ResearchProgrammes” (1970)3.5 “The History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions”(1971)3.6 “Popper on Demarcation and Induction” (1974)3.7 “Why Did Copernicus’s Research Programme Supersede


Winter 2016 Edition 3

Ptolemy’s?” (1976)4. Mincemeat Unmade: Lakatos versus FeyerabendBibliography

Works by LakatosSecondary Literature

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1. Life

1.1 A Tale of Two Lakatoses

Imre Lakatos was a warm and witty friend and a charismatic and inspiringteacher (see Feyerabend 1975a). He was also a fallibilist, and a professedfoe of elitism and authoritarianism, taking a dim view of what hedescribed as the Wittgensteinian “thought police” (owing to the Orwelliantendency on the part of some Wittgensteinians to suppress dissent byconstricting the language, dismissing the stuff that they did not like asinherently meaningless) (UT: 225 and 228–36). In the later (and British)phase of his career he was a dedicated opponent of Marxism who played aprominent part in opposing the socialist student radicals at the LSE in1968, arguing passionately against the politicization of scholarship (LTD;Congden 2002).

But in the earlier and Hungarian phase of his life, Lakatos was a Stalinistrevolutionary, the leader of a communist cell who persuaded a youngcomrade that it was her duty to the revolution to commit suicide, sinceotherwise she was likely to be arrested by the Nazis and coerced intobetraying the valuable young cadres who constituted the group (Bandy2009: ch. 5; Long 1998 and 2002; Congden 1997). So far from being a

Imre Lakatos


fallibilist, the young Lakatos displayed a cocksure self-confidence in hisgrasp of the historical situation, enough to exclude any alternative solutionto the admittedly appalling problems that this group of young and mostlyJewish communists were facing in Nazi-occupied Hungary. (“Is there noother way?” the young comrade asked. The answer, apparently, was “No”;Long 2002: 267.) After the Soviet victory, during the late 1940s, he was aneager co-conspirator in the creation of a Stalinist state, in which thedenunciation of deviationists was the order of the day (Bandy 2009: ch. 9).Lakatos was something close to a thought policeman himself, with apowerful job in the Ministry of Education, vetting university teachers fortheir political reliability (Bandy 2009: ch. 8; Long 2002: 272–3; Congden1997). Later on, after falling afoul of the regime that he had helped toestablish and doing time in a gulag at Recsk, he served the ÁVH, theHungarian secret police, as an informant by keeping tabs on his friendsand comrades (Bandy 2009: ch. 14; Long 2002). And he took a prominentpart, as a Stalinist student radical, in trying to purge the University ofDebrecen of “reactionary” professors and students and in undermining theprestigious but unduly independent Eötvös College, arguing passionatelyagainst the depoliticized (but covertly bourgeois) scholarship that Eötvösallegedly stood for (Bandy 2009: chs. 4 and 9; Long 1998 and 2002).

1.2 Life and Works: The Second World and the Third

To the many that knew and loved the later Lakatos, some of these facts aredifficult to digest. But how relevant are they to assessing his philosophy,which was largely the product of his British years? This is an importantquestion as Lakatos was wont to draw a Popperian distinction betweenWorld 3—the world of theories, propositions and arguments—and World 2—the psychological world of beliefs, decisions and desires. And he wassometimes inclined to suggest that in assessing a philosopher’s work weshould confine ourselves to World 3 considerations, leaving thesubjectivities of World 2 to one side (see, for instance, F&AM: 140).



So does a philosopher’s life have any bearing on his works? We take ourcue from the writings of Lakatos himself. Of course, there were factsabout his early career that Lakatos would not have wanted to be widelyknown, and which he managed to keep concealed from his Western friendsand colleagues during his lifetime. But what does his official philosophyhave to say about the relevance of biographical data to intellectual history?

In “The History of Science and its Rational Reconstructions” (HS&IRR)Lakatos develops a theory of how to do the history of science, which, withsome adjustments, can be blown up into an account of how to dointellectual history in general. For Lakatos, the default assumption in thehistory of science is that the scientists in question are engaged in a more-or-less rational effort to solve a set of (relatively) “pure” problems (suchas “How to explain the apparent motions of the heavenly bodiesconsistently with a plausible mechanics?”). A “rational reconstruction” inthe history of science, employs a theory of (scientific) rationality inconjunction with an account of the problems as they appeared to thescientists in question to display some intellectual episode as a series ofrational responses to the problem-situation. On the whole, it is a plus for atheory of [scientific] rationality if it can display the history of science as arelatively rational affair and a strike against it if it cannot. Thus inLakatos’s opinion, naïve versions of Popper’s falsificationism are in asense falsified by the history of science, since they represent too much of itas an irrational affair with too many scientists hanging on to hypothesesthat they ought to have recognized as refuted. If the rational reconstructionsucceeds—that is if we can display some intellectual development as arational response to the problem situation—then we have an “internal”history of the developments in question. If not, then the “rationalreconstruction of history needs to be supplemented by an empirical (socio-psychological) ‘external history’” (HS&IRR: 102). Non-rational or“external” factors sometimes interfere with the rational development ofscience. “No rationality theory will ever solve problems like why

Imre Lakatos


Mendelian genetics disappeared in Soviet Russia in the 1950s” [the reasonbeing that Lysenko, a Stalin favourite, acquired hegemonic status withinthe world of Soviet biology and persecuted the Mendelians] (HS&IRR:114).

(Perhaps this marks an important departure from Hegel. For a trueHegelian, everything can, in the last analysis, be seen as rationallyrequired for the self-realization of the Absolute. Hence all history is“internal” in something like Lakatos’s sense, since the “cunning of reason”ensures that apparently irrational impulses are subordinated to the ultimategoal of history.)

Is there, so to speak, an “internal” history of Lakatos’s intellectualdevelopment that can be displayed as rational? Or must it be partlyexplained in terms of “external” influences? The answer depends on theaccount of rationality that we adopt and the problem situation that we takehim to have been addressing.

Whether or not a particular theoretical (or practical) choice is susceptibleto an internal explanation depends, in part, on the actor’s problem.Consider, for example, Descartes’ theory of the vortices, namely that theplanets are whirled round the sun by a fluid medium which itself containslittle whirlpools in which the individual planets are swimming. Descartes’theory of the vortices, is fairly rational if we take it as an attempt (in thelight of what was then known) to explain the motion of the heavenlybodies in a way that is consistent with Copernican astronomy. But it is alot more rational if we take to be an attempt to explain the motion of theheavenly bodies in a way that is consistent with Copernican astronomywithout formally contradicting the Church’s teaching that the earth doesnot move. (The earth goes round the sun but it does not move with respectto the fluid medium that whirls it round the sun, and, for Descartes, motionis defined as motion with respect to the contiguous matter.) So do we read



Descartes’ theory as a fairly rational attempt to solve one problem which isdistorted by an external factor or as a very rational attempt solve a relatedbut more complex problem? Well the answer is not clear, but if we want tounderstand Descartes intellectual development we need to know that itwas an important constraint on his theorizing that his views should beformally consistent with the doctrines of the Church.

Similarly, it is important in understanding Lakatos’s theorizing to realize(for example) that in later life he wanted to develop a demarcationcriterion between science and non-science that left Soviet Marxism(though not perhaps all forms of Marxism) on the non-scientific side of thedivide. And this holds whether we regard this constraint as a non-rationalexternal factor or as a constituent of his problem situation and henceinternal to a rational reconstruction of his intellectual development.Biographical facts can be relevant to understanding a thinker’s ideas sincethey can help to illuminate the problem situation to which they wereaddressed.

Furthermore, the big issue with respect to Lakatos’s development is howmuch of the old Hegelian-Marxist remained in the later post-Popperianphilosopher, and how much of his philosophy was a reaction against hisearlier self. To answer this question we need to know something about thatearlier self—either the self that secretly persisted or the self that the laterLakatos was reacting against.

1.3 From Stalinist Revolutionary to Methodologist of Science

Imre Lakatos was born Imre Lipsitz in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, onNovember 9, 1922, the only child of Jewish parents, Jacob Marton Lipsitzand Margit Herczfeld. Lakatos’s parents parted when he was very youngand he was largely brought up by his grandmother and his mother whoworked as a beautician. The Hungary into which Lakatos was born was a

Imre Lakatos


kingdom without a king ruled by an admiral without a navy, the “Regent”Admiral Horthy, who had gained his naval rank in the service of the then-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. The regime was authoritarian, a sort offascism-lite. After a brilliant school career, during which he wonmathematics competitions and a multitude of prizes, Lakatos enteredDebrecen University in 1940. Lakatos graduated in Physics, Mathematics,and Philosophy in 1944. During his time at Debrecen he became acommitted communist, attending illegal underground communist meetingsand, in 1943, starting his own illegal study group.

However, in Lakatos’s group the emphasis was on preparing the youngcadres for the coming communist revolution, rather than engaging inpublic propaganda or antifascist resistance activities (Bandy 2009: ch. 3).

In March 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary to forestall its attempts tonegotiate a separate peace. (The Hungarian government had allied with theAxis powers, in the hopes of recovering some of the territories lost at theTreaty of Trianon in 1920. By 1944 they had begun to realize that this wasa mistake.) Admiral Horthy, whose anti-Semitism was a more gentlemanlyaffair than that of the Nazis (he was fine with systematic discriminationbut apparently drew the line at mass-murder), was forced to accept acollaborationist government led by Döme Sztójay as prime minister. Thenew regime had none of Horthy’s humanitarian scruples and began apolicy of enthusiastic and systematic cooperation with the Nazi genocideprogram. In May, Lakatos’s mother, grandmother and other relatives were

No-one who attended Imre’s groups has forgotten the intensity andbrilliance of the atmosphere. “He opened the world to me!” aparticipant said. Even those who were later disillusioned withcommunism or ashamed of acts they committed remember thesense of inspiration, clear thinking and hope for a new society theyfelt in Imre’s secret seminars. (Long 2002: 265)



forced into the Debrecen ghetto, thence to die in Auschwitz—the fate ofabout 600,000 Hungarian Jews. Lakatos’s father, a wine merchant,managed to get away and survived the war, eventually ending up inAustralia. A little earlier, in March, Lakatos himself had managed toescape from Debrecen to Nagváryad (now Oradea in Romania) with falsepapers under the name of Molnár. Later, a Hungarian friend, Vilma Balázs,recalled that

In Nagváryad Lakatos restarted his Marxist group. The co-leader was histhen-girlfriend and subsequent wife, Éva Révész. In May, the group wasjoined by Éva Izsák, a 19-year-old Jewish antifascist activist who neededlodgings with a non-Jewish family. Lakatos decided that there was a riskthat she would be captured and forced to betray them, hence her duty bothto the group and to the cause was to commit suicide. A member of thegroup took her across country to Debrecen and gave her cyanide (Congden1997, Long 2002, Bandy 2009, ch. 5). To lovers of Russian literature, theepisode recalls Dostoevsky’s The Possessed/Demons (based in part on thereal life Nechaev affair). In Dostoevsky’s novel the anti-Tsaristrevolutionary, Pyotr Verkhovensky, posing as the representative of a largerevolutionary organization, tries to solidify the provincial cell of which heis the chief by getting the rest of group to share in the murder of adissident member who supposedly poses a threat to the group. (It does notwork for the fictional Pytor Verkhovensky and it did work for the real-lifeSergei Nechaev.) Hence the title of Congden’s 1997 exposé “Possessed:Imre Lakatos’s Road to 1956”. But to communists or former communistsof Lakatos’s generation, it recalled a different book: Chocolate, by theBolshevik writer Aleksandr Tarasov-Rodianov. This is a stirring tale ofrevolutionary self-sacrifice in which the hero is the chief of the local

Imre [had been] very close to his mother and they were quite poor.He often blamed himself for her death and wondered if he couldhave saved her. (Bandy 2009: 32)

Imre Lakatos


Cheka (the forerunner of the KGB). Popular in Hungary, it encouraged aromantic cult of revolutionary ruthlessness and sacrifice in its (mostly)youthful readers. As one of Lakatos’s contemporaries, György Magosh putit,

It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could bepersuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause. Asfor Lakatos himself, a chance remark in his most famous paper suggestssomething about his attitude.

If you admire the hero who has the courage to make the tough choicebetween two catastrophic alternatives, isn’t there a temptation tomanufacture catastrophic alternatives so that you can heroically choosebetween them?

Late in 1944, following a Soviet victory, Lakatos returned to Debrecen,and changed his name from the Germanic Jewish Lipsitz to the Hungarianproletarian Lakatos (meaning “locksmith”). He became active in the nowlegal Communist Party and in two leftist youth and student organizations,the Hungarian Democratic Youth Federation (MADISZ) and the DebrecenUniversity Circle (DEK). As one of the leaders of the DEK, Lakatos

How that book inspired us. How we longed to be professionalrevolutionaries who could be hanged several times a day in theinterest of the working class and of the great Soviet Union. (Bandy2009: 31)

One has to appreciate the dare-devil attitude of our methodologicalfalsificationist [or perhaps as he would have said in an earlierphase of his career, the conscientious Leninist]. He feels himself tobe a hero who, faced with two catastrophic alternatives, dares toreflect coolly on their relative merits and [to] choose the lesser evil.(FMSRP: 28)



agitated for the dismissal of reactionary professors from Debrecen and theexclusion of reactionary students.

Lakatos moved to Budapest in 1946. He became a graduate student atBudapest University, but spent much of his time working towards thecommunist takeover of Hungary. This was a slow-motion affair,characterized by the infamous “salami tactics” of the Communist leaderMátyás Rákosi. Lakatos worked chiefly in the Ministry of Education,evaluating the credentials of university teachers and making lists of thosewho should be dismissed as untrustworthy once the communists took over(Bandy 2009: ch. 8). He was also a student at Eötvös College, but attackedit publicly as an elitist and bourgeois institution. The College, and otherslike it, was closed in 1950 after the communist takeover. In 1947 Lakatosgained his doctorate from Debrecen University for a thesis entitled “Onthe Sociology of Concept Formation in the Natural Sciences”. In 1948,after the communist takeover was substantially complete, he gained ascholarship to undertake further study in Moscow.

Lakatos flew to Moscow in January 1949, only to be recalled for “un-Party-like” behaviour in July. What these “un-party-like” activities were issomething of a mystery but even more of a mystery is why, havingreturned from Moscow under a cloud, he seemed so cool, calm andcollected. Lakatos’s biographers, Long and Bandy, speculate that he wasbeing held in reserve to prepare a case against the communist educationchief, József Révai, who was scheduled to appear in a new show trial. Butwhen Rákosi decided not to prosecute Révai after all, Lakatos was thrown

We are aware that this move on our part is incompatible with thetraditional and often voiced “autonomy” of the university [Lakatosstated], but respect for autonomy, in our view, cannot mean that wehave to tolerate the strengthening of fascism and reaction. (Bandy2009: 59 and 61)

Imre Lakatos


to the wolves (Bandy 2009: ch. 12; Long 2002). He was arrested in April1950 on charges of revisionism and, after a period in the cellars of thesecret police (including, of course, torture), he was condemned to theprison camp at Recsk.

However Lakatos was probably doomed anyway. In later life Lakatos wasbig admirer of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Perhaps he recognizedhimself in Orwell’s description of the Party intellectual (and expert onNewspeak) Syme:

An instance of Lakatos’s Syme-like behaviour is his 1947 denunciation ofthe literary critic and philosopher György Lukács, one of the intellectualluminaries of the communist movement. Lukács represented theacademically respectable face of communism, and favoured a gradual anddemocratic transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lakatosorganized an “anti-Lukács meeting…held under the aegis of the ValóságCircle” to critique Lukács’s foot-dragging and “Weimarism” (Bandy 2009:110). Once the regime was firmly in control, Lukács was indeed censuredfor his undue concessions to bourgeois democracy, and he spent the earlyfifties under a cloud. But in 1947, Lakatos’s criticisms were deemed

Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again.He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing thatSyme…was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminalif he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtlywrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion,aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he wasunorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he veneratedBig Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics…. Yet afaint air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things thatwould have been better unsaid, he had read too many books….(Orwell 2008 [1949]: 58)



premature and he got into trouble because of his un-Party-like activities.(Lukács himself referred to the episode as a “cliquish kaffe klatsch”.) InCommunist Hungary it was important not to be “one pamphlet behind” theParty line (Bandy 2009: 92). Lakatos was the sort of over-zealouscommunist who was sometimes a couple of pamphlets ahead.

After his release from Recsk in September 1953 (minus several teeth),Lakatos remained for a while, a loyal Stalinist. He eked out a living in theMathematics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science, reading,researching and translating (including a translation into Hungarian ofGeorge Pólya’s How to Solve It). During this time he was informing onfriends and colleagues to the ÁVH., the Hungarian secret police, thoughhe subsequently claimed that he did not pass on anything incriminating(Long, 2002: 290 ). It was whilst working at the Mathematics Institute thathe first gained access to the works of Popper. Gradually he turned againstthe Stalinist Marxism that had been his creed. He married (as his secondwife) Éva Pap and lived at her parents’ house (his father-in-law being thedistinguished agronomist, Endre Pap). In 1956 he joined the revisionistPetőfi Circle and delivered a stirring speech on “On Rearing Scholars”which at least burnt his bridges with Stalinism:

The very foundation of scholarly education is to foster in studentsand postgrads a respect for facts, for the necessity of thinkingprecisely, and to demand proof. Stalinism, however, branded thisas bourgeois objectivism. Under the banner of partinost [Party-like] science and scholarship, we saw a vast experiment to create ascience without facts, without proofs.

… a basic aspect of the rearing of scholars must be an endeavourto promote independent thought, individual judgment, and todevelop conscience and a sense of justice. Recent years have seenan entire ideological campaign against independent thinking and

Imre Lakatos


But Lakatos was not just explicitly repudiating Stalinism. He was alsoimplicitly criticizing another prominent member of the Petőfi Circle whohad been a big influence on his first PhD, namely György Lukács (seeRopolyi 2002 for the early influence). For Lukács’s work is pervaded byjust the kind of hostility towards empiricism and disdain for facts thatLakatos is denouncing in his speech, as well as an arts-sider’s contemptfor the natural sciences, all of which would have been anathema to thelater Lakatos. Indeed Lukács was notorious for the view that that

and that

Thus the Stalinist Lakatos of 1947 had explicitly denounced Lukács fornot being Stalinist enough, but the revisionist Lakatos of 1956 wasimplicitly denouncing Lukács for being methodologically too much of aStalinist. For the later Lakatos, what was wrong with “orthodox Marxism”was chiefly that its novel factual predictions had been systematicallyfalsified (see §3.2 below). But that was pretty much the complaint of early

against believing one’s own senses. This was the struggle againstempiricism [Laughter and applause]. (Bandy 2009: 221. Bandyquotes the transcripts which seem to differ slightly from theprepared text in the Lakatos archives, reprinted in F&AM)

even if the development of science had proved all Marx’sassertions to be false…we could accept this scientific criticismwithout demur and still remain Marxists—as long as we adhered tothe Marxist method

the orthodox Marxist who realizes that…the time has come for theexpropriation of the exploiters, will respond to the vulgar-Marxistlitany of “facts” which contradict this process with the words ofFichte, one of the greatest of classical German philosophers: “Somuch the worse for the facts”. (Lukács 2014 [1919]: ch. 3)



revisionists such as Bernstein (see Kolakowski 1978: ch. 4, and it wasagainst that kind of revisionism that Lukács’s Bolshevik writings were aprotest (see Lukács 1971 [1923] and 2014 [1919]). Though factual“refutations” of a research programme are not always decisive, a Lukács-like indifference to the facts is, for Lakatos, the mark of a fundamentallyunscientific attitude. In our opinion, this puts paid to Ropolyi’s opinionthat Lukács continued to be a major influence on the later Lakatos.

Lakatos left Hungary in November 1956 after the Soviet Union crushedthe short-lived Hungarian revolution. He walked across the border intoAustria with his wife and her parents. Within two months he was at King’sCollege Cambridge, with a Rockefeller Fellowship to write a PhD underthe supervision of R.B. Braithwaite, which he completed in 1959 under thetitle “Essays in the Logic of Mathematical Discovery”. If we set aside hisromantic adventures, the story of Lakatos’s life thereafter is largely thestory of his work, though we should not forget his activities as anacademic politician. Even his friendship with Feyerabend and hisfriendship and subsequent bust-up with Popper were very much work-related. In Britain his academic career was meteoric. In 1960 he wasappointed Assistant Lecturer in Karl Popper’s department at the LondonSchool of Economics. By 1969 he was Professor of Logic, with aworldwide reputation as a philosopher of science. During the studentrevolts of the 1960s, which in Britain were centred on the LSE, Lakatosbecame an establishment figure. He wrote a “Letter to the Director of theLondon School of Economics” defending academic freedom and academicautonomy, which was widely circulated. It denounces the student radicalsfor allegedly trying to do what he himself had done at Debrecen andEötvös (though he is careful to conceal the parallel, citing Nazi andMuscovite precedents instead) (LTD: 247).

Lakatos died suddenly in 1974 of a heart attack at the height of hispowers. He was 51.

Imre Lakatos


2. Lakatos’s Big Ideas

Imre Lakatos has two chief claims to fame.

2.1 Against Formalism in Mathematics

The first is his Philosophy of Mathematics, especially as set forth in“Proofs and Refutations” (1963–64) a series of four articles, based on hisPhD thesis, and written in the form of a many-sided dialogue. These weresubsequently combined in a posthumous book and published, withadditions, in 1976. The title is an allusion to a famous paper of Popper’s,“Conjectures and Refutations” (the signature essay of his best-knowncollection), in which Popper outlines his philosophy of science. Lakatos’spoint is that the development of mathematics is much more like thedevelopment of science as portrayed by Popper than is commonlysupposed, and indeed much more like the development of science asportrayed by Popper than Popper himself supposed.

What Lakatos does not make so much of (though he does not conceal iteither) is that in his view the development of mathematics is also muchmore like the development of thought in general as analysed by Hegelthan Hegel himself supposed. There is thesis, antithesis and synthesis,“Hegelian language, which [Lakatos thinks would], generally be capableof describing the various developments in mathematics” (P&R: 146). Thusthere is a certain sense in which Lakatos out-Hegels Hegel, giving adialectical analysis of a discipline (mathematics) that Hegel himselfdespised as insufficiently dialectical (see Larvor 1998, 1999, 2001). HenceFeyerabend’s gibe (which Lakatos took in good part) that Lakatos was aPop-Hegelian, the bastard child of Popperian father and a Hegelian mother(F&AM: 184–185).



Proofs and Refutations is a critique of “formalist” philosophies ofmathematics (including formalism proper, logicism and intuitionism),which, in Lakatos’s view, radically misrepresent the nature of mathematicsas an intellectual enterprise. For Lakatos, the development of mathematicsshould not be construed as series of Euclidean deductions where thecontents of the relevant concepts has been carefully specified in advanceso as to preclude equivocation. Rather, these water-tight deductions fromwell-defined premises are the (perhaps temporary) end-points of anevolutionary, and indeed a dialectical, process in which the constituentconcepts are initially ill-defined, open-ended or ambiguous but becomesharper and more precise in the context of a protracted debate. The proofsare refined in conjunction with the concepts (hence “proof-generatedconcepts”) whilst “refutations” in the form of counterexamples play aprominent part in the process. [One might almost say, paraphrasing Hegel,that in Lakatos’s view “when Euclidean demonstrations paint their grey ingrey, then has a shape of mathematical life grown old…The owl of theformalist Minerva begins its flight only with the falling of dusk” (Hegel2008 [1820/21]: 16).]

Lakatos is also keen to display the development of mathematics as arational affair even though the proofs (to begin with) are often lacking inlogical rigour and the key concepts are often open-ended and unclear

A corollary of this is that in mathematics many of the “proofs” are notreally proofs in the full sense of the word (that is, demonstrations thatproceed deductively from apodictic premises via unquestionable rules ofinference to certain conclusions) and that many of the “refutations” are not

The idea—expressed so clearly by Seidel [and clearly endorsed byLakatos himself]—that a proof can be respectable without beingflawless, was a revolutionary one in 1847, and, unfortunately, stillsounds revolutionary today. (P&R: 139)

Imre Lakatos


really refutations either, since something rather like the “refuted” thesisoften survives the refutation and arises refreshed and invigorated from thedialectical process.

This becomes apparent early on in the dialogue, when the PopperianGamma protests at the Teacher’s insouciance with respect to refutation, acounterexample to Euler’s thesis (and therefore to Cauchy’s proof) that,for all regular polyhedra, the number of vertices, minus the number ofedges, plus the number of faces equals two ( ). Thecounterexample is a solid bounded by a pair of nested cubes, one of whichis inside, but does not touch the other:

For this hollow cube, (including both the inner and the outerones) . According to Gamma, this simply refutes Euler’s conjectureand disproves Cauchy’s proof:

V − E + F = 2

V − E + F= 4

GAMMA: Sir, your composure baffles me. A singlecounterexample refutes a conjecture as effectively as ten. Theconjecture and its proof have completely misfired. Hands up! Youhave to surrender. Scrap the false conjecture, forget about it and trya radically new approach.

TEACHER: I agree with you that the conjecture has received asevere criticism by Alpha’s counterexample. But it is untrue thatthe proof has “completely misfired”. If, for the time being, you



Thus even in his earlier work, when he is still a professed disciple ofPopper, Lakatos is already a rather dissident Popperian. Firstly, there arethe hat-tips to Hegel as well as to Popper that crop up from time to time inProofs and Refutations including the passage where he praises (andcondemns) them both in the same breath. (“Hegel and Popper representthe only fallibilist traditions in modem philosophy, but even they bothmade the mistake of reserving a privileged infallible status formathematics”. P&R: 139n.1.) Given that Hegel was anathema to Popper(witness his famous or notorious anti-Hegel “scherzo” in The OpenSociety and Its Enemies, (1945 [1966])) this strongly suggests that Lakatostook his Popper with a large pinch of salt. Secondly, for Popper himself aproof is a proof and a refutation is supposed to kill a scientific conjecturestone-dead. Thus non-demonstrative proofs and non-refuting refutationsmark a major departure from Popperian orthodoxy.

2.2 Improving on Popper in the Philosophy of Science

The dissidence continues with Lakatos’s second major contribution tophilosophy, his “Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” orMSRP (developed in detail in in his FMSRP), a radical revision ofPopper’s Demarcation Criterion between science and non-science, leading

agree to my earlier proposal to use the word “proof” for a“thought-experiment which leads to decomposition of the originalconjecture into subconjectures”, instead of using it in the sense of a“ guarantee of certain truth”, you need not draw this conclusion.My proof certainly proved Euler’s conjecture in the first sense, butnot necessarily in the second. You are interested only in proofswhich “prove” what they have set out to prove. I am interested inproofs even if they do not accomplish their intended task.Columbus did not reach India but he discovered something quiteinteresting.

Imre Lakatos


to a novel theory of scientific rationality. This is arguably a lot morerealistic than the Popperian theory it was designed to supplant (or, inearlier formulations, the Popperian theory that it was designed to amend).For Popper, a theory is only scientific if is empirically falsifiable, that is ifit is possible to specify observation statements which would prove itwrong. A theory is good science, the sort of theory you should stick with(though not the sort of thing you should believe as Popper did not believein belief), if it is refutable, risky, and problem-solving and has stood up tosuccessive attempts at refutation. It must be highly falsifiable, well-testedbut (thus far) unfalsified.

Lakatos objects that although there is something to be said for Popper’scriterion, it is far too restrictive, since it would rule out too much ofeveryday scientific practice (not to mention the value-judgments of thescientific elite) as unscientific and irrational. For scientists often persist—and, it seems, rationally persist—with theories, such as Newtoniancelestial mechanics that by Popper’s standards they ought to have rejectedas “refuted”, that is theories that (in conjunction with other assumptions)have led to falsified predictions. A key example for Lakatos is the“Precession of Mercury” that is, the anomalous behaviour of theperihelion of Mercury, which shifts around the Sun in a way that it oughtnot to do if Newton’s mechanics were correct and there were no othersizable body influencing its orbit. The problem is that there seems to be nosuch body. The difficulty was well known for decades but it did not causeastronomers to collectively give up on Newton until Einstein’s theorycame along. Lakatos thought that the astronomers were right not toabandon Newton even though Newton eventually turned out to be wrongand Einstein turned out to be right.

Again, Copernican heliocentric astronomy was born “refuted” because ofthe apparent non-existence of stellar parallax. If the earth goes round thesun then the apparent position of at least some of the fixed stars (namely



the closest ones) ought to vary with respect to the more distant ones as theearth is moving with respect to them. Some parts of the night sky shouldlook a little different at perihelion (when the earth is furthest from the sun)from the way that they look at aphelion (when the earth is at its nearest tothe sun, and hence at the other end of its orbit). But for nearly threecenturies after the publication of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus 1543, nosuch differences were observed. In fact, there is a very slight difference inthe apparent positions of the nearest stars depending on the earth’sposition in its orbit, but the difference is so very slight as to be almostundetectable. Indeed it was completely undetectable until 1838 whensufficiently powerful telescopes and measuring techniques were able todetect it, by which time the heliocentric view had long been regarded as anestablished fact. Thus astronomers had not given up on either Copernicusor his successors despite this apparent falsification.

But if scientists often persist with “refuted” theories, either the scientistsare being unscientific or Popper is wrong about what constitutes goodscience, and hence about what scientists ought to do. Lakatos’s idea is toconstruct a methodology of science, and with it a demarcation criterion,whose precepts are more in accordance with scientific practice.

How does it work? Well, falsifiability continues to play a part in Lakatos’sconception of science but its importance is somewhat diminished. Insteadof an individual falsifiable theory which ought to be rejected as soon as itis refuted, we have a sequence of falsifiable theories characterized byshared a hard core of central theses that are deemed irrefutable—or, atleast, refutation-resistant—by methodological fiat. This sequence oftheories constitutes a research programme.

The shared hard core of this sequence of theories is often unfalsifiable intwo senses of the term.

Imre Lakatos


Firstly scientists working within the programme are typically (and rightly)reluctant to give up on the claims that constitute the hard core.

Secondly the hard core theses by themselves are often devoid of empiricalconsequences. For example, Newtonian mechanics by itself—the threelaws of mechanics and the law of gravitation—won’t tell you what youwill see in the night sky. To derive empirical predictions from Newtonianmechanics you need a whole host of auxiliary hypotheses about thepositions, masses and relative velocities of the heavenly bodies, includingthe earth. (This is related to Duhem’s thesis that, generally speaking,theoretical propositions—and indeed sets of theoretical propositions—cannot be conclusively falsified by experimental observations, since theyonly entail observation-statements in conjunction with auxiliaryhypotheses. So when something goes wrong, and the observationstatements that they entail turn out to be false, we have two intellectualoptions: modify the theoretical propositions or modify the auxiliaryhypotheses. See Ariew 2014.) For Lakatos an individual theory within aresearch programme typically consists of two components: the (more orless) irrefutable hard core plus a set of auxiliary hypotheses. Together withthe hard core these auxiliary hypotheses entail empirical predictions, thusmaking the theory as a whole—hard core plus auxiliary hypotheses—afalsifiable affair.

What happens when refutation strikes, that is when the hard core inconjunction with the auxiliary hypotheses entails empirical predictionswhich turn out to be false? What we have essentially is a modus tollensargument in which science supplies one of the premises and nature (plusexperiment and observation) supplies the other:

1. If <hard core plus auxiliary hypotheses>, then O (where Orepresents some observation statement);

2. Not-O (Nature shouts “no”: the predictions don’t pan out);



Therefore

3. Not <hard core plus auxiliary hypotheses>.

But logic leaves us with a choice. The conjunction of the hard core plusthe auxiliary hypotheses has to go, but we can retain either the hard coreor the auxiliary hypotheses. What Lakatos calls the negative heuristic ofthe research programme, bids us retain the hard core but modify theauxiliary hypotheses:

Thus when refutation strikes, the scientist constructs a new theory, the nextin the sequence, with the same hard core but a modified set of auxiliaryhypotheses. How is she supposed to do this? Well, associated with thehard core, there is what Lakatos calls the positive heuristic of theprogramme.

For example, if a planet is not moving in quite the smooth ellipse that itought to follow a) if Newtonian mechanics were correct and b) if therewere nothing but the sun and the planet itself to worry about, then the

The negative heuristic of the programme forbids us to direct themodus tollens at this “hard core”. Instead, we must use ouringenuity to articulate or even invent “auxiliary hypotheses”,which form a protective belt around this core, and we must redirectthe modus tollens to these. It is this protective belt of auxiliaryhypotheses which has to bear the brunt of tests and gets adjustedand re-adjusted, or even completely replaced, to defend the thus-hardened core. (FMSRP: 48)

The positive heuristic consists of a partially articulated set ofsuggestions or hints on how to change, develop the “refutablevariants” of the research programme, how to modify, sophisticate,the “refutable” protective belt. (FMSRP: 50)

Imre Lakatos


positive heuristic of the Newtonian programme bids us look for anotherheavenly body whose gravitational force might be distorting the firstplanet’s orbit. Alternatively, if stellar parallax is not observed, we can tryto refute this apparent refutation by refining our instruments and makingmore careful measurements and observations.

Lakatos evidently thinks that when one theory in the sequence has beenrefuted, scientists can legitimately persist with the hard core without beingin too much of a hurry to construct the next refutable theory in thesequence. The fact that some planetary orbits are not quite what theyought to be should not lead us to abandon Newtonian celestial mechanics,even if we don’t yet have a testable theory about what exactly is distortingthem. It is worth remarking too that the auxiliary hypotheses play a ratherparadoxical part in Lakatos’s methodology. On the one hand, they connectthe central theses of the hard core with experience, allowing to them tofigure in testable, and hence, refutable theories. On the other hand, theyinsulate the theses of the hard core from refutation, since when the arrowof modus tollens strikes, we direct it at the auxiliary hypotheses rather thanthe hard core.

So far we have had an account of what scientists typically do do and whatLakatos thinks that they ought to do. But what about the DemarcationCriterion between science and non-science or between good science andbad? Even if it is sometimes rational to persist with the hard core of atheory when the hard core plus some set of auxiliary hypotheses has beenrefuted, there must surely be some circumstances in which is it rational togive it up! The Methodology of Scientific Research Programme has got tobe something more than a defence of scientific pig-headedness! AsLakatos himself puts the point:

Now, Newton’s theory of gravitation, Einstein’s relativity theory,quantum mechanics, Marxism, Freudianism [the last two stock



Lakatos, of course, thinks not. Some science is objectively better thanother science and some science is so unscientific as to hardly qualify asscience at all. So how does he distinguish between “a scientific orprogressive programme” and a “pseudoscientific or degenerating one”?(S&P: 4–5)

To begin with, the unit of scientific evaluation is no longer the individualtheory (as with Popper), but the sequence of theories, the researchprogramme. We don’t ask ourselves whether this or that theory is scientificor not, or whether it constitutes good or bad science. Rather we askourselves whether the sequence of theories, the research programme, isscientific or non-scientific or constitutes good or bad science. Lakatos’sbasic idea is that a research programme constitutes good science—the sortof science it is rational to stick with and rational to work on—if it isprogressive, and bad science—the kind of science that is, at least,intellectually suspect—if it is degenerating. What is it for a researchprogramme to be progressive? It must meet two conditions. Firstly it mustbe theoretically progressive. That is, each new theory in the sequence musthave excess empirical content over its predecessor; it must predict noveland hitherto unexpected facts (FMSRP: 33). Secondly it must beempirically progressive. Some of that novel content has to becorroborated, that is, some of the new “facts” that the theory predicts mustturn out to be true. As Lakatos himself put the point, a researchprogramme “is progressive if it is both theoretically and empirically

examples of bad science or pseudo-science for Popperians], are allresearch programmes, each with a characteristic hard corestubbornly defended, each with its more flexible protective belt andeach with its elaborate problem-solving machinery. Each of them,at any stage of its development, has unsolved problems andundigested anomalies. All theories, in this sense, are born refutedand die refuted. But are they [all] equally good? (S&P: 4–5)

Imre Lakatos


progressive, and degenerating if it is not” (FMSRP: 34). Thus a researchprogramme is degenerating if the successive theories do not deliver novelpredictions or if the novel predictions that they deliver turn out to be false.

Novelty is, in part, a competitive notion. The novelty of a researchprogramme’s predictions is defined with respect to its rivals. A predictionis novel if the theory not only predicts something not predicted by theprevious theories in the sequence, but if the predicted observation ispredicted neither by any rival programme that might be in the offing norby the conventional wisdom. A programme gets no brownie points bypredicting what everyone knows to be the case but only by predictingobservations which come as some sort of a surprise. (There is someambiguity here and some softening later on—see below §3.6—but tobegin with, at least, this was Lakatos’s dominant idea.)

One of Lakatos’s key examples is the predicted return of Halley’s cometwhich was derived by observing part of its trajectory and using Newtonianmechanics to calculate the elongated ellipse in which it was moving. Thecomet duly turned up seventy-two years later, exactly where and whenHalley had predicted, a novel fact that could not have been arrived atwithout the aid of Newton’s theory (S&P: 5). Before Newton, astronomersmight have noticed a comet arriving every seventy-two years (though theywould have been hard put to it to distinguish that particular comet fromany others), but they could not have been as exact about the time and placeof its reappearance as Halley managed to be. Newton’s theory deliveredfar more precise predictions than the rival heliocentric theory developedby Descartes, let alone the earth-centered Ptolemaic cosmology that hadruled the intellectual roost for centuries. That’s the kind of spectacularcorroboration that propels a research programme into the lead. And it wasa similarly novel prediction, spectacularly confirmed, that dethronedNewton’s physics in favour of Einstein’s. Here’s Lakatos again:



A degenerating research programme, on the other hand (unlike the theoriesof Newton and Einstein) either fails to predict novel facts at all, or makesnovel predictions that are systematically falsified. Marxism, for example,started out as theoretically progressive but empirically degenerate (novelpredictions systematically falsified) and ended up as theoreticallydegenerate as well (no more novel predictions but a desperate attempt toexplain away unpredicted “observations” after the event).

This programme made the stunning prediction that if one measuresthe distance between two stars in the night and if one measures thedistance between them during the day (when they are visibleduring an eclipse of the sun), the two measurements will bedifferent. Nobody had thought to make such an observation beforeEinstein’s programme. Thus, in progressive research programme,theory leads to the discovery of hitherto unknown novel facts.(S&P: 5)

Has…Marxism ever predicted a stunning novel fact successfully?Never! It has some famous unsuccessful predictions. It predictedthe absolute impoverishment of the working class. It predicted thatthe first socialist revolution would take place in the industriallymost developed society. It predicted that socialist societies wouldbe free of revolutions. It predicted that there will be no conflict ofinterests between socialist countries. Thus the early predictions ofMarxism were bold and stunning but they failed. Marxistsexplained all their failures: they explained the rising livingstandards of the working class by devising a theory of imperialism;they even explained why the first socialist revolution occurred inindustrially backward Russia. They “explained” Berlin 1953,Budapest 1956, Prague 1968. They “explained” the Russian-Chinese conflict. But their auxiliary hypotheses were all cooked upafter the event to protect Marxian theory from the facts. The

Imre Lakatos


Thus good science is progressive and bad science is degenerating and aresearch programme may either begin or end up as such a degenerateaffair that it ceases to count as science at all. If a research programmeeither predicts nothing new or entails novel predictions that never come topass, then it may have reached such a pitch of degeneration that it hastransformed into a pseudoscience.

It is sometimes suggested that in Lakatos’s opinion no theory either is orought to be abandoned, unless there is a better one in existence (Hacking1983: 113). Does this mean that no research programme should be givenup in the absence of a progressive alternative, no matter how degenerate itmay be? If so, this amounts to the radically anti-sceptical thesis that it isbetter to subscribe to a theory that bears all the hallmarks of falsehood,such as the current representative of a truly degenerate programme, than tosit down in undeluded ignorance. (The ancient sceptics, by contrastthought that it is better not to believe anything at all rather than believesomething that might be false.) We are not sure that this was Lakatos’opinion, though he clearly thinks it a mistake to give up on a progressiveresearch programme, unless there is a better one to shift to. But consideragain the case of Marxism. What Lakatos seems to be suggesting in thepassage quoted above, is that it is rationally permissible—perhaps evenobligatory—to give up on Marxism even if it has no progressive rival, thatis, if there is currently no alternative research programme with a set ofhard core theses about the fundamental character of capitalism and itsultimate fate. (After all, the later Lakatos probably subscribed to thePopperian thesis that history in the large is systematically unpredictable.In which case there could not be a genuinely progressive programmewhich foretold the fate of capitalism. At best you could have a conditional

Newtonian programme led to novel facts; the Marxian laggedbehind the facts and has been running fast to catch up with them.(S&P: 4–5)



theory, such as Piketty’s, which says that under capitalism, inequality islikely to grow—unless something unexpected happens or unless we decideto do something about it. See Piketty 2014: 35.) So although Lakatosthinks that the scientific community seldom gives up on a programme untilsomething better comes along, it is not clear that he thinks that this is whatthey always ought to do.

There are numerous departures from Popperian orthodoxy in all this. Tobegin with, Lakatos effectively abandons falsifiability as the DemarcationCriterion between science and non-science. A research programme can befalsifiable (in some senses) but unscientific and scientific but unfalsifiable.First, the falsifiable non-science. Every successive theory in adegenerating research programme can be falsifiable but the programme aswhole may not be scientific. This might happen if it only predictedfamiliar facts or if its novel predictions were never verified. A tiredpurveyor of old and boring truths and/or a persistent predictor of novelfalsehoods might fail to make the scientific grade. Secondly, the non-falsifiable science. In Lakatos’s opinion, it need not be a crime to insulatethe hard-core of your research programme from empirical refutation. ForPopper, it is a sin against science to defend a refuted theory by“introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting thetheory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation” (C&R, 48). Not sofor Lakatos, though this is not to say that when it comes to ad hocery“anything goes”.

Thirdly, Lakatos’s Demarcation Criterion is a lot more forgiving thanPopper’s. For a start, an inconsistent research programme need not becondemned to the outer darkness as hopelessly unscientific. This is notbecause any of its constituent theories might be true. Lakatos rejects theHegelian thesis that there are contradictions in reality. “If science aims attruth, it must aim at consistency; if it resigns consistency, it resigns truth.”

Imre Lakatos


But though science aims at truth and therefore at consistency, this does notmean that it can’t put up with a little inconsistency along the way.

Thus it was both rational and scientific for Bohr to persist with hisresearch programme, even though its hard core theses on the structure ofthe atom were fundamentally inconsistent (FMSRP: 55–58). So althoughLakatos rejects Hegel’s, claim that there are contradictions in reality(though not, perhaps in Reality), he also rejects Popper’s thesis thatbecause contradictions imply everything, inconsistent theories excludenothing and must therefore be rejected as unfalsifiable and unscientific.For Lakatos, Bohr’s theory of the atom is fundamentally inconsistent, butthis does not mean that it implies that the moon is made of green cheese.Thus what Lakatos seems to be suggesting is here (though he is not asexplicit as he might be) is that, when it comes to assessing scientificresearch programmes, we should sometimes employ a contradiction-tolerant logic; that is a logic that rejects the principle, explicitly endorsedby Popper, that anything whatever follows from a contradiction (FMSRP:58 n. 2). In today’s terminology, Lakatos is a paraconsistentist (since heimplicitly denies that from a contradiction anything follows) but not adialethist (since he explicitly denies that there are true contradictions).Thus he is neither a follower of Popper with respect to theories nor afollower of Hegel with respect to reality (see Priest 2006 and 2002,especially ch. 7, and Brown and Priest 2015).

There is another respect in which Lakatos’s Demarcation Criterion is moreforgiving than Popper’s. For Popper, if a theory is not falsifiable, then it’s

The discovery of an inconsistency—or of an anomaly—[need not]immediately stop the development of a programme: it may berational to put the inconsistency into some temporary, ad hocquarantine, and carry on with the positive heuristic of theprogramme. (FMSRP: 58)



not scientific and that’s that. It’s an either/or affair. For Lakatos beingscientific is a matter of more or less, and the more the less can vary overtime. A research programme can be scientific at one stage, less scientific(or non-scientific) at another (if it ceases to generate novel predictions andcannot digest its anomalies) but can subsequently stage a comeback,recovering its scientific status. Thus the deliverances of the Criterion arematters of degree, and they are matters of degree that can vary from onetime to another. We can seldom say absolutely that a research programmeis not scientific. We can only say that it is not looking very scientificallyhealthy right now, and that the prospects for a recovery do not look good.Thus Lakatos is much more of a fallibilist than Popper. For Popper, we cantell whether a theory is scientific or not by investigating its logicalimplications. For Lakatos our best guesses might turn out to be mistaken,since the scientific status of a research programme is determined, in part,by its history, not just by its logical character, and history, as Popperhimself proclaimed, is essentially unpredictable.

There is another divergence from Popper which helps to explain theabove. Lakatos collapses two of Popper’s distinctions into one; thedistinction between science and non-science and the distinction betweengood science and bad. As Lakatos himself put the point in his lectures atthe LSE:

The demarcation problem may be formulated in the followingterms: what distinguishes science from pseudoscience? This is anextreme way of putting it, since the more general problem, calledthe Generalized Demarcation Problem, is really the problem of theappraisal of scientific theories, and attempts to answer thequestion: when is one theory better than another? We are, naturally,assuming a continuous scale whereby the value zero correspondsto a pseudo scientific theory and positive values to theoriesconsidered scientific in a higher or lesser degree. (F&AM: 20)

Imre Lakatos


Apart from the fact that, for Lakatos, a) it can be rational to persist with a“falsified” theory, and indeed with theory that is actually inconsistent—both anathema to Popper—and that b) that for Lakatos “all theories areborn refuted and die refuted” (S&P: 5) so that there are no unrefutedconjectures for the virtuous scientist to stick with (thus making whatPopper would regard as good science practically impossible), Lakatos’smethodology of scientific research programmes replaces two of Popper’scriteria with one. For Popper has one criterion to distinguish science fromnon-science (or science from pseudoscience if it is a theory with scientificpretensions) and another to distinguish good science from bad science. InPopper’s view, a theory is scientific if it is empirically falsifiable and non-scientific if it is not. Being scientific or not is an absolute affair, a matter ofeither/or, since a theory is scientific so long as there are some observationsthat would falsify it. Being good science is a matter of degree, since atheory may give more or less hostages to empirical fortune, depending onthe boldness of its empirical predictions. For Lakatos on the other hand,non-science or pseudo-science is at one end of a continuum with the bestscience at the other end of the scale. Thus a theory—or better, a researchprogramme—can start out as genuinely scientific, gradually becoming lessso over the course of time (which was Lakatos’s view of Marxism)without altogether giving up the scientific ghost. Was the Marxism ofLakatos’s day bad science or pseudo-science? From Lakatos’ point ofview, the question does not have a determinate answer, the point being thatit isn’t good science since it represents a degenerating researchprogramme. But although Lakatos evidently considered Marxism to be inbad way, he could not consign it to the dustbin of history as definitivelyfinished, since (as he often insisted) degenerating research programmescan sometimes stage a comeback.



3. Works

3.1 Proofs and Refutations (1963–4, 1976)

As we have seen, Lakatos’s first major publication in Britain was thedialogue “Proofs and Refutations” which originally appeared as a series offour journal articles. The dialogue is dedicated to George Pólya for his“revival of mathematical heuristic” and to Karl Popper for his criticalphilosophy.

Proofs and Refutations is a highly original production. The issues itdiscusses are far removed from what was then standard fare in thephilosophy of mathematics, dominated by logicism, formalism andintuitionism, all attempting to find secure foundations for mathematics. Itstheses are radical. And its dialogue form makes it a literary as well as aphilosophical tour de force.

Its official target is “formalism” or “metamathematics”. But (as we havenoted) “formalism” doesn’t just mean “formalism” proper, as this term isusually understood in the Philosophy of Mathematics. For Lakatos“formalism” includes not just Hilbert’s programme but also logicism andeven intuitionism. Formalism sees mathematics as the derivation oftheorems from axioms in formalised mathematical theories. Thephilosophical project is to show that the axioms are true and the proofsvalid, so that mathematics can be seen as the accumulation of eternaltruths. An additional philosophical question is what these truths are about,the question of mathematical ontology.

Lakatos, by contrast, was interested in the growth of mathematicalknowledge. How were the axioms and the proofs discovered? How doesmathematics grow from informal conjectures and proofs into more formalproofs from axioms? Logical empiricist (and Popperian) orthodoxy

Imre Lakatos


distinguished the “context of discovery” from the “context ofjustification”, consigned the former to the realm of empirical psychology,and thought it a matter of “unregimented insight and good fortune”, hardlya fit subject for philosophical analysis. Philosophy of mathematics consistsof the logical analysis of completed theories. Formalism manifests thisorthodoxy and “disconnects the history of mathematics from thephilosophy of mathematics” (P&R: 1). Against the orthodoxy, Lakatosparaphrased Kant (the paraphrase has become almost as famous as theoriginal):

[Lakatos had stated this Kantian aphorism more generally at a conferencein Oxford in 1961: “History of science without philosophy of science isblind. Philosophy of science without history of science is empty”. SeeHanson 1963: 458.]

Suppose we agree with Lakatos that there is room for heuristics or a logicor discovery. Still, orthodoxy could insist that discovery is one thing,justification another, and that the genesis of ideas has nothing to do withtheir justification. Lakatos, more radically, disputed this. First, he rejectedthe foundationalist or justificationist project altogether: mathematics hasno foundation in logic, or set theory, or anything else. Second, he insistedthat the way in which a theory grows plays an essential role in itsmethodological appraisal. This is as much a central theme of hisphilosophy of empirical science as it is of his philosophy of mathematics.

As noted above, Proofs and Refutations takes the form of an imaginarydialogue between a teacher and a group of students. It reconstructs thehistory of attempts to prove the Descartes-Euler conjecture aboutpolyhedra, namely, that for all polyhedra, the number of vertices minus the

the history of mathematics…has become blind, while thephilosophy of mathematics… has become empty. (P&R: 2)



number of edges plus the number of faces is two ( ). Theteacher presents an informal proof of this conjecture, due to Cauchy. Thisis a “thought experiment which suggest a decomposition of the originalconjecture into subconjectures or lemmas” from which the originalconjecture is supposed to follow. We now have, as well as the originalconjecture or conclusion, the subconjectures or premises, and the meta-conjecture that the latter entail the former. Clearly, this kind of “informalproof” is quite different from the “formalist” idea that an informal proof isa formal proof with gaps (PP2: 63). Equally clearly, any of theseconjectures might be refuted by counterexamples.

In the dialogue, the students, who are rather advanced, demonstrate thepoint—they demolish the Teacher’s “proof” by producingcounterexamples. The counterexamples are of three kinds:

(1) Counterexamples to the conclusion that are not alsocounterexamples to any of the premises (“global but not localcounterexamples”): These establish that the conclusion does not reallyfollow from the stated premises. They require us to improve the proof,to unearth the “hidden lemma” which the counterexample also refutes,so that it becomes a “local as well as global” counterexample—see(3), below.

(2) Counterexamples to one of the premises that are not alsocounterexamples to the conclusion (“local but not globalcounterexamples”): These require us to improve the proof byreplacing the refuted premise with a new premise which is not subjectto the counterexample and which (we hope) will do as much toestablish the conclusion as the original refuted premise did.

(3) Counterexamples both to the conclusion and to (at least one of) thepremises (“global and local counterexamples”): These can be dealt

V − E + F = 2

Imre Lakatos


with by incorporating the refuted premise or lemma into the originalconclusion, as a condition of its correctness. For example, a picture-frame is a polyhedron with a hole or tunnel in it, for which

).

So if we define a polyhedron as “normal” if it has no holes or tunnelsin it, we can restrict the original conjecture to “normal” polyhedra andavoid this refutation. The trouble with this method is that it reducesthe content of the original conjecture, and an empty tautologythreatens—“For all Eulerian polyhedra (polyhedra for which

), ”. More particularly, a blanketexclusion of polyhedra with holes or tunnels rules out some polyhedrafor which , despite the presence of a hole—a cube witha square hole drilled through it and two ring-shaped faces being anexample. This suggests a deeper problem than finding the domain ofvalidity of the original conjecture—finding a general relationshipbetween V, E and F for all polyhedra whatsoever.

We see from this analysis what Lakatos calls the “dialectical unity ofproofs and refutations”. Counterexamples help us to improve our proof byfinding hidden lemmas. And proofs help us improve our conjecture byfinding conditions on its validity. Either way, or both ways, mathematicalknowledge grows. And as it grows, its concepts are refined. We begin witha vague, unarticulated notion of what a polyhedron is. We have aconjecture about polyhedra and an informal proof of it. Counterexamples

V − E + F = 0

V − E + F = 2 V − E + F = 2

V − E + F = 2



or refutations “stretch” our original concept: is a picture frame a genuinepolyhedron, or a cylinder, or two polyhedra joined along a single edge?

Attempts to rescue our conjecture from refutation yield “proof-generateddefinitions” like that of a “normal polyhedron”.

Is there any limit to this process of “concept-stretching”, or any distinctionto be drawn between interesting and frivolous concept-stretching? Can thisprocess yield, not fallible conjectures and proofs, but certainty? Lakatos’seditors distinguish the certainty of proofs from the certainty of the axiomsfrom which all proofs must proceed. They claim that rigorous proof-procedures have been attained, and that “There is no serious sense inwhich such proofs are fallible” (P&R: 57). Quite so. But only because wehave decided not to “stretch” the logical concepts that lie behind thoserigorous and formalizable proof-procedures. A rigorous proof in classicallogic may not be valid in intuitionistic or paraconsistent logics. And thekey point is that a proof, however rigorous, only establishes that if theaxioms are true, then so is the theorem. If the axioms themselves remainfallible, then so do the theorems rigorously derived from them. Providingfoundations for mathematics requires the axioms to be made certain, byderiving them from logic or set theory or something else. Lakatos claimedthat this foundational project had collapsed (see below, §3.2).

To what extent is this imaginary dialogue a contribution to the history ofmathematics? Lakatos explained that

The dialogue form should reflect the dialectic of the story: it ismeant to contain a sort of rationally reconstructed or “distilled”

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This device, first necessitated by the dialogue form, became a pervasivetheme of Lakatos’s writings. It was to attract much criticism, most of itcentred around the question whether rationally reconstructed history wasreal history at all. The trouble is that the rational and the real can comeapart quite radically. At one point in Proofs and Refutations a character inthe dialogue makes a historical claim which, according to the relevantfootnote, is false. Lakatos says that the statement

On occasions, Lakatos’s sense of humour ran away with him, as when thetext contains a made-up quotation from Galileo, and the footnote says thathe “was unable to trace this quotation” (P&R: 62). (Though this doesrather smack of his youthful habit of winning arguments with “bourgeois”students by fabricating on-the-spot quotations from the authorities theyrespected. See Bandy 2009: 122.) Horrified critics protested that rationallyreconstructed history is a caricature of real history, not in fact real historyat all but rather “philosophy fabricating examples”. One critic said thatphilosophers of science should not be allowed to write history of science.This academic trade unionism is misguided. You do not falsify history bypointing out that what ought to have happened did not, in fact, happen.

There is an important pedagogic point to all this, too. The dialectic ofproofs and refutations can generate, in the ways explained above, quitecomplicated definitions of mathematical concepts, definitions that can only

history. The real history will chime in in the footnotes, most ofwhich are to be taken, therefore, as an organic part of the essay.(P&R: 5)

although heuristically correct (i.e. true in a rational history ofmathematics) is historically false. This should not worry us: actualhistory is frequently a caricature of its rational reconstructions.(P&R: 21)



really be understood by considering the process that gave rise to them. Butmathematics teaching is not historical, or even quasi-historical. (One sensein which Lakatos’s theory is dialectical: it represents a process as rationaleven though the terms of the debate are not clearly defined.) But studentsnowadays are presented with the latest definitions at the outset, andrequired to learn them and apply them, without ever really understandingthem.

One question about Proofs and Refutations is whether the heuristicpatterns depicted in it apply to the whole of mathematics. While someaspects clearly are peculiar to the particular case-study of polyhedra, thegeneral patterns are not. Lakatos himself applied them in a second case-study, taken from the history of analysis in the nineteenth century(“Cauchy and the Continuum”, 1978c).

3.2 “Regress” and “Renaissance”

The onslaught on formalism continues in a pair of papers “Infinite Regressand the Foundations of Mathematics” (1962) and “A Renaissance ofEmpiricism in the Recent Philosophy of Mathematics?” (1967a). HerePopper predominates and Hegel recedes. Regress is a critique of bothlogicism and formalism proper (that is, Hilbert’s programme),concentrating primarily on Russell. Russell sought to rescue mathematicsfrom doubt and uncertainty by deriving the totality of mathematics fromself-evident logical axioms via stipulative definitions and water-tight rulesof inference. But the discovery of Russell’s Paradox and the felt need todeal with the Liar and related paradoxes blew this ambition sky-high. Forsome of the axioms that Russell was forced to posit—the Theory of Typeswhich Lakatos sees, in effect, as a monster-barring definition (elevatedinto an axiom) that avoids the paradoxes by excluding self-referentialpropositions as meaningless; the Axiom of Reducibility which is needed torelax the unduly restrictive Theory of Types; the Axiom of Infinity which

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posits an infinity of objects in order to ensure that every natural numberhas a successor; and the Axiom of Choice (which Russell refers to as themultiplicative axiom)—were either not self-evident, not logical or both.Russell’s fall-back position was to argue that mathematics was notjustified by being derivable from his axioms but that his axioms werejustified because the truths of mathematics could be derived from themwhilst avoiding contradictions:

As Lakatos amply documents in Renaissance, a surprising number oflabourers in the foundationalist vinyard—Carnap and Quine, Fraenkel andGödel, Mostowski and von Neumann—were prepared to make similarnoises. Lakatos dubs this development “empiricism” (or “quasi-empiricism”) and hails it on the one hand whilst condemning it on theother.

Why “empiricism”? Not because it revives Mill’s idea that the truths ofarithmetic are empirical generalizations, but because it ascribes tomathematics the same kind of hypothetico-deductive structure that theempirical sciences supposedly display, with axioms playing the part oftheories and their mathematical consequences playing the part ofobservation-statements (or in Lakatos’s terminology, “potential falsifiers”).

Why does Lakatos hail the “empiricism” that he also condemns? Becauseit means that mathematics has the same kind epistemic structure thatscience has according to Popper. It’s a matter of axiomatic conjectures that

When pure mathematics is organized as a deductive system…itbecomes obvious that, if we are to believe in the truth of puremathematics, it cannot be solely because we believe in the truth ofthe set of premises. Some of the premises are much less obviousthan some of their consequences, and are believed chiefly becauseof their consequences. (Russell 2010 [1918]: 129)



can be mathematically refuted. (The difference between science andmathematics consists in the differences between the potential falsifiers.)

Why does Lakatos condemn the “empiricism” that he also commends?Because Russell, like most of his supporters, succumbs to the “inductivist”illusion that the axioms can be confirmed by the truth of theirconsequences. In Lakatos’s opinion this is simply a mistake. Truth cantrickle down from the axioms to their consequences and falsity can flowupwards from the consequences to the axioms (or at least to the axiomset). But neither truth nor probability nor justified belief can flow up fromthe consequences to the axioms from which they follow. Here Lakatos out-Poppers Popper, portraying not just science but even mathematics as acollection of unsupported conjectures that can be refuted but notconfirmed, anything else being condemned as to “inductivism”. Howeverthe inductivism that Lakatos scornfully rejects in Renaissance is just thekind of inductivism that he would be recommending to Popper just a fewyears later.

3.3 “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic” (1968)

In 1964 Lakatos turned from the history and philosophy of mathematics tothe history and philosophy of the empirical sciences. He organised afamous International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, held inLondon in 1965. Participants included Tarski, Quine, Carnap, Kuhn, andPopper. The Proceedings ran to four volumes (Lakatos (ed.) 1967 & 1968,and Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.) 1968 & 1970). Lakatos himselfcontributed three major papers to these proceedings. The first of these(Renaissance) has been dealt with already. The second, “Changes in theProblem of Inductive Logic” (Changes), analyses the debate betweenCarnap and Popper regarding the relations between theory and evidence inscience. It is remarkable both for its conclusions and for its methodology.The conclusion, to put it bluntly, is that a certain brand of inductivism is

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bunk. The prospects for an inductive logic that allows you to derivescientific theories from sets of observation statements, thus providing themwith a weak or probabilistic justification, are dim indeed. There is noinductive logic according to which real-life scientific theories can beinferred, “partially proved” or “confirmed (by facts) to a certain degree”’(Changes: 133). But Lakatos sought to prove his point by analysing thePopper/Carnap debate and reversing the common verdict that Carnap hadwon and that Popper had lost. And here he faced a problem. As Fox(1981) explains:

Lakatos’s strategy was to accept the facts but reverse the value-judgmentby developing the twin concepts of a degenerating research programmeand a degenerating problem-shift and applying them to Carnap’ssuccessive endeavours. But Carnap’s programme was philosophico-mathematical rather than scientific. So what was wrong with it could notbe that it failed to predict novel facts or that its predictions were mostlyfalsified. For it was not in the business of predicting empiricalobservations whether novel or otherwise. (Indeed Lakatos’s concept of adegenerating philosophical programme seems to have preceded hisconcept of a degenerating scientific programme.) So what was wrong withCarnap’s enterprise? In an effort to solve his original problem, Carnap hadto solve a series of sub-problems. Some were solved, others were not,

The facts on which the verdict was based were that Popper’sclaimed refutations of Carnap all failed, through either fallacy ormisrepresentation, and that Carnap was a careful, precise, irenicthinker, in the habit of stating as his conclusions exactly what hispremises warranted. The standards on which the verdict was basedwere the respectable professional ones by which we mark third-year essays. The verdict was: Carnap gets an A+, and Popper’srefusal to wither away is a moral and intellectual embarrassment.(Fox 1981: 94)



generating sub-sub-problems of their own. Some of these were solved,others were not, generating sub-sub-sub-problems and sub-sub-sub-sub-problems etc. Since some of these sub-problems (or sub-sub-problems)were solved, the programme appeared to its proponents be busy andprogressive. But it was drifting further and further away from achieving itsoriginal objectives.

Now for Lakatos, such problem-shifts are not necessarily degenerating. Ifa programme ends up solving a problem that it did not set out to solve, thatis all fine and dandy so long as the problem that it succeeds in solving ismore interesting and important than the problem that it did set out to solve.

Thus Carnap starts off with the exciting problem of showing howscientific theories can be partially confirmed by empirical facts and endsup with technical papers about drawing different coloured balls out of anurn. In Lakatos’s opinion this does not constitute intellectual progress.Carnap had lost the plot.

3.4 “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific ResearchProgrammes” (1970)

The best-known of Lakatos’s “Conference Proceedings” is Criticism andthe Growth of Knowledge, which became an international best-seller. Itcontains Lakatos’s important paper “Falsification and the Methodology ofScientific Research Programmes” (FMSRP) which we have discussedalready. A briefer account of this methodology had already appeared(Lakatos 1968a), in which Lakatos distinguished dogmatic, naïve and

But one may solve problems less interesting than the original one;indeed, in extreme cases, one may end up solving (or trying tosolve) no other problems but those which one has oneself createdwhile trying to solve the original problem. In such cases we maytalk about a degenerating problem-shift. (Changes: 128–9)

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sophisticated falsificationist positions, attributing them to “Popper0,Popper1 and Popper2”—or as he otherwise put it, “proto-Popper, pseudo-Popper and proper-Popper”. (Popper did not appreciate beingdisassembled into temporal or ideological parts and protested “I am not aTrinity”.)

Lakatos’s methodology has been seen, rightly, as an attempt to reconcilePopper’s falsificationism with the views of Thomas Kuhn. Popper sawscience as consisting of bold explanatory conjectures, and dramaticrefutations that led to new conjectures. Kuhn (and Polanyi before him)objected that

Instead, science consists of long periods of “normal science”, paradigm-based research, where the task is to force nature to fit the paradigm. Whennature refuses to comply, this is not seen as a refutation, but rather as ananomaly. It casts doubt, not on the ruling paradigm, but on the ingenuity ofthe scientists—“only the practitioner is blamed, not his tools”. It is only inextraordinary periods of “revolutionary science” that anything likePopperian refutations occur.

Lakatos proposed a middle-way, in which Kuhn’s socio-psychologicaltools were replaced by logico-methodological ones. The basic unit ofappraisal is not the isolated testable theory, but rather the “researchprogramme” within which a series of testable theories is generated. Eachtheory produced within a research programme contains the same commonor “hard core” assumptions, surrounded by a “protective belt” of auxiliaryhypotheses. When a particular theory is refuted, adherents of a programmedo not pin the blame on their hard-core assumptions, which they render

No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientificdevelopment at all resembles the methodological stereotype offalsification by direct comparison with nature. (Kuhn 1962: 77)



“irrefutable by fiat”. Instead, criticism is directed at the hypotheses in the“protective belt” and they are modified to deal with the problem.Importantly, these modifications are not random—they are in the bestcases guided by the heuristic principles implicit in the “hard core” of theprogramme. A programme progresses theoretically if the new theorysolves the anomaly faced by the old and is independently testable, makingnew predictions. A programme progresses empirically if at least one ofthese new predictions is confirmed.

Notice that a programme can make progress, both theoretically andempirically, even though every theory produced within it is refuted. Aprogramme degenerates if its successive theories are not theoreticallyprogressive (because it predicts no novel facts), or not empiricallyprogressive (because novel predictions get refuted). Furthermore, andcontrary to Kuhn’s idea that normally science is dominated by a singleparadigm, Lakatos claimed that the history of science typically consists ofcompeting research programmes. A scientific revolution occurs when adegenerating programme is superseded by a progressive one. It acquireshegemonic status though its rivals may persist as minority reports.

Kuhn saw all this as vindicating his own view, albeit with differentterminology (Kuhn 1970: 256, 1977: 1). But this missed the significanceof replacing Kuhn’s socio-psychological descriptions with logico-methodological ones. It also missed Lakatos’s claim that there are alwayscompeting programmes or paradigms. Hegemony is seldom as total asKuhn seems to suggest.

3.5 “The History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions”(1971)

As we have seen, in Proofs and Refutations Lakatos had already joked that“actual history is frequently a caricature of its rational reconstructions”.

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The use of the plural—“reconstructions”—is important. There is morethan one way of rationally reconstructing history, and how you do itdepends upon what you count as rational and what not—depends, in short,in your theory of rationality. There is not one “rational history”—as Hegelmay have thought—but several competing ones. And, in a remarkabledialectical turn, Lakatos proposed that one can evaluate competingtheories of rationality by asking how well they enable one to reconstructthe history of science (whether it be mathematics or empirical science).The thought is that if your philosophy of science, or theory of scientificrationality, deems most of “great science” irrational, then something iswrong with it. Contrariwise, the more of the history of “great science”your theory of rationality deems rational, the better that theory is.

The obvious worry is that this meta-criterion for theories of scientificrationality threatens to deprive the philosophy of science of any criticalbite. Will not the best philosophy of science simply say that whateverscientists do is rational, that scientific might is right, that the bestmethodology is Feyerabend’s “Anything goes”? Lakatos’s Kantianepigram “Philosophy of science without history of science is empty;history of science without philosophy of science is blind” threatens toeliminate the philosophy of science altogether, in favour of historical-sociological studies of the decisions of scientific communities. (One of usdiscusses this problem, and attempts to disarm the worry, in Musgrave1983.)

Another worry, which is perhaps less obvious, is that Lakatos seems to beimplicitly appealing to the kind of inductive principle that he scornselsewhere. Isn’t he saying that a sequence of successes in the history ofscience displaying key episodes as rational tends to confirm a theory ofscientific rationality?



Lakatos himself was a master of philosophically inspired case-studies ofepisodes in the history of science—Feyerabend said he had turned this intoan art form. His “Hegelian” idea that the “rationally reconstructed” historyof thought has primacy is emphasised in two books, Larvor 1998 andKadvany 2001. After his death, a Colloquium was held in Nafplion,Greece, where case-studies applying Lakatos’s ideas to episodes from thehistory of both the natural and social sciences were presented by hisstudents and colleagues. The Proceedings of this “Nafplion Colloquium”were subsequently published in two volumes—Howson (ed.) 1976 andLatsis (ed.) 1976. Further case-studies include Zahar 1973 and Urbach1974.

However, Urbach’s paper, which was written with Lakatos’s activecollaboration and encouragement (F&AM: 348–34), represents somethingof an “own goal” for the MSRP. Urbach argued that the environmentalistprogramme in IQ Studies, which tries to explain intergroup differences intested intelligence as due to environmental causes, was a degeneratingresearch programme. At least it was degenerating when compared to itshereditarian rival which puts these differences down to differences inhereditary endowments. The tables were dramatically turned just thirteenyears later with the discovery of the Flynn effect (1987) which showedmassive differences in intergroup IQs which simply could not beexplained by hereditary differences. (The groups in question weregenetically identical, the higher scoring groups being the children or thegrandchildren of the lower scoring groups. See Flynn 1987 and 2009.)Thus the supposedly “degenerate” programme was propelled into the lead.Of course the MSRP allows for such dramatic reversals of fortune, but it isat least a bit embarrassing if a programme damned as degenerate by boththe Master and one of his chief disciples is spectacularly vindicated justthirteen years later.

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3.6 “Popper on Demarcation and Induction” (1974)

“Popper on demarcation and induction” (PDI) was written in 1970 for thePopper volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series (Schilpp (ed.)1974). Sadly, it caused a major falling out with Popper despite thegenerous praise in its opening sections:

Much of the paper is devoted to criticizing Popper’s demarcation criterionand arguing for his own. Most of these criticisms have been canvasedalready. Lakatos argues, for instance, that Popper’s falsificationism can befalsified

But Lakatos also develops a criticism that has nothing much to do with thedifferences between his demarcation criterion and Popper’s, indeed acriticism that seems equally telling against Popper’s philosophy and hisown.

Lakatos points out that when Popper first wrote his classic Logik derForschung (LSD) in the early 1930s, the correspondence theory of truthwas regarded with deep suspicion by the empiricist philosophers that hewas trying to convince. Accordingly Popper was careful to state that

Popper’s ideas represent the most important development in thephilosophy of the twentieth century; an achievement in thetradition—and on the level—of Hume, Kant, or Whewell. … Morethan anyone else, he changed my life. I was nearly forty when I gotinto the magnetic field of his intellect. His philosophy helped me tomake a final break with the Hegelian outlook which I had held fornearly twenty years. (PDI: 139)

by showing that the best scientific achievements were unscientific[by Popper’s standards] and that the best scientists, in their greatestmoments, broke the rules of Popper’s game of science. (PDI: 146)



But shortly thereafter Popper met Tarski who convinced him that thecorrespondence theory of truth was philosophically respectable, and thisliberated him to declare that truth, or truth-likeness was the object of thescientific enterprise (LSD: 273n). Lakatos apparently endorses thisdevelopment.

But Lakatos points out a problem. There is now a disconnect between thegame of science and the aim of science. The game of science consists inputting forward falsifiable, risky and problem-solving conjectures andsticking with the unrefuted and the well-corroborated ones. But the aim ofscience consists in developing true or truth-like theories about a largelymind-independent world. And Popper has given us no reason to supposethat by playing the game we are likely to achieve the aim. After all, atheory can be falsifiable, unfalsified, problem-solving and well-corroborated without being true.

in the logic of science here outlined it is possible to avoid using theconcepts “true” and “false” … We need not say that the theory is“false” [or “falsified”], but we may say instead that it iscontradicted by a certain set of accepted basic statements. Norneed we say of basic statements that they are “true” or “false”, forwe may interpret their acceptance as the result of a conventionaldecision, and the accepted statements as results of this decision.(LSD: 273–274)

Tarski’s rehabilitation of the correspondence theory of truth…stimulated Popper to complement his logic of discovery with hisown theory of verisimilitude and of approximation to the Truth, anachievement marvellous both in its simplicity and in its problem-solving power. (PDI: 154)

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To restore the connection between the game and its aim Lakatos makes aplea with Popper for a “whiff of “inductivism”” (PDI: 159). What is thiswhiff?

In other words, it is a metaphysical principle which states that highlyfalsifiable but well-corroborated theories are (in some sense) more likelyto be true (or truth-like) than their low-risk counterparts. Corroborationstend to confirm. Thus by playing the game we approximate the aim.Lakatos goes on to urge that this whiff of inductivism is not much of anask, since Popper sometimes seems to presuppose it without fully realizingthat he is doing so.

There are three points to note.

(1) If this criticism holds good against Popper it is equally good againstLakatos himself. He too has a disconnect between the game of science—which, when it is played well, consists in developing progressive researchprogrammes—and the aim of science—which, like Popper, he takes to betruth (FMSRP: 58). To solve this problem, we need a metaphysicalprinciple which states that highly progressive research programmes are (insome sense) more likely to be true (or truth-like) than their degeneratingrivals. Thus if Popper could do with a whiff of inductivism, the same goesfor Lakatos.

(2) The inductivism that Lakatos recommends to Popper looks remarkablylike the inductivism that he condemned in Russell. (“I do not see any way

An inductive principle which connects realist metaphysics withmethodological appraisals, verisimilitude with corroboration,which reinterprets the rules of the “scientific game” as a—conjectural—theory about the signs of the growth of knowledge,that is, about the signs of growing verisimilitude of our scientifictheories. (PDI: 156)



out of a dogmatic assertion that we know the inductive principle, or someequivalent; the only alternative is to throw over almost everything that isregarded as knowledge by science and common sense.” Russell 1944: 683,quoted disdainfully by Lakatos at Regress: 18.) But if inductivism ispermissible (or even de rigueur) in the Philosophy of Science, perhaps it ispermissible (or even de rigueur) in the Philosophy of Mathematics! Inwhich case, the Renaissance of Empiricism in the Philosophy ofMathematics may count as a genuine renaissance after all, since the logicalor set-theoretic axioms may (as Russell supposed) be confirmed (andhence rationally believed) because of their mathematical consequences. Ifepistemic support can flow upwards from evidence to theory (where theevidence consists of a sequence of novel and successful predictions),perhaps it can flow upwards from consequences to axioms.

(3) This episode undermines an influential “Hegelian” reading of Lakatosdue to Ian Hacking. According to Hacking,

This is an odd assertion as Lakatos explicitly endorses the correspondencetheory on a number of occasions and even declares truth to be the aim ofscience, which is why contradictions are intolerable in the long term(FMSRP: 58). But in Hacking’s view, Lakatos was

He found his replacement in the concept of progress.

Lakatos, educated in Hungary in an Hegelian and Marxisttradition, took for granted the post-Kantian, Hegelian, demolitionof correspondence theories. (Hacking 1983: 118)

down on truth, not just a particular theory of truth. He [did] notwant a replacement for the correspondence theory, but areplacement for truth itself. (Hacking 1983: 119)

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Progress becomes a surrogate for truth. We don’t ask whether a theory istrue or not but only whether it is part of a progressive programme. Toparaphrase the young Karl Popper,

But if Lakatos had really been such an anti-truth-freak, he would not havecongratulated Popper on his Tarskian turn. Rather he would havecondemned him for taking the vacuous concept of truth to be the aim ofscience. As for the disconnect between the aim of science and the game ofscience, he would have recommended that Popper resolve it by droppingthe aim and substituting the game (which, according to Hacking, was whatLakatos himself was trying to do). If truth were not the object of theexercise, there would be no need for a whiff of inductivism to connectPopper’s method with science’s ultimate objective. But Lakatos did thinkthat a whiff of inductivism was needed to connect Popper’s method withscience’s objective. Hence Lakatos believed that truth was the object ofthe scientific enterprise. Whatever the remnants of Hegelianism thatLakatos retained in later life, an aversion to truth (or to the correspondencetheory of truth ) was not one of them.

Lakatos then defines objectivity and rationality in terms ofprogressive research programmes, and allows an incident in thehistory of science to be objective and rational if its internal historycan be written as a sequence of progressive problem shifts.(Hacking 1983: 126)

in the logic of science [that Lakatos has] outlined it is possible toavoid using the concepts “true” and “false” [which, in Lakatos’sopinion, is a jolly good thing!]. (LSD: 273)



3.7 “Why Did Copernicus’s Research Programme SupersedePtolemy’s?” (1976)

Lakatos’s last publication was an historical a case-study, co-authored withElie Zahar and published after his death. It argues that the methodology ofscientific research programmes can explain the Copernican Revolution asa rational process by which an earlier theory (Ptolemy’s geocentric theoryof the Cosmos) was dethroned in favour another objectively better one(Copernicus’s heliocentric theory). It thus demonstrates the rationality ofthe Copernican Revolution (one of the most dramatic episodes in thehistory of thought) and confirms the MSRP as a theory of scientificrationality (so long as we accept the inductive principle that the more“great science” that a demarcation criterion can represent as rational, themore likely it is to be correct).

Apart from the intrinsic interest of the subject, the paper marks amodification of Lakatos’s conception of factual novelty and hence amodification to the MSRP. For the earlier Lakatos, a fact counts as novelwith respect to a research programme if it is not predicted by any of itsrivals and if it is not already known. In WDCRPSP Lakatos accepts anamendment due to his co-author Elie Zahar. Zahar’s original problem wasour old friend the Precession of Mercury. This was explained by Einstein’sprogramme—specifically the General Theory of Relativity—but not byNewton’s, and this was generally thought to count in Einstein’s favour.The difficulty is that in Lakatos’s lexicon the Precession of Mercury didnot count as a novel fact. After all it had been known to astronomers fornearly a century. Thus, given the original version of the MSRP, thediscovery that that the General Theory could explain the Precession ofMercury (whilst Newton’s theory could not) did not mean that Einstein’sprogramme was any more progressive than Newton’s. (That had to beargued on other grounds.) But this is such a counterintuitive result that itsuggests a defect in the MSRP. Zahar’s modification is that a fact counts as

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a novel prediction with respect to a research programme if a) it is notpredicted by any of the programme’s rivals and b) either it is not alreadyknown or if it is already known, the hard core of the programme was notdevised to explain it.

By this modified criterion the Precession of Mercury counts as a novel factwith respect to Einstein’s programme. For the General Theory wasdesigned to solve a different set of problems. The prediction that if theGeneral Theory were correct, the perihelion of Mercury would shift as itdoes without the influence of any other heavenly body came as an“unexpected present from Schwarzschild” (the man who did the sums). Itwas therefore “an unintended by-product of Einstein”s programme’(WDCRPSP: 185). So despite its antiquity, the Precession of Mercurycounts as a novel fact or a novel prediction with respect to Einstein’sprogramme, thus making the programme a lot more progressive. Somemight regard Zahar’s amendment as a suspiciously ad hoc move, but adhoc or not, it looks like an improvement on the original MSRP. Lakatosand Zahar go on to use this idea to explain why Copernicus’s programmevery properly superseded Ptolemy’s.

4. Mincemeat Unmade: Lakatos versus Feyerabend

According to his friend Paul Feyerabend, Lakatos was “was a fascinatingperson, an outstanding thinker and the best philosopher of science of ourstrange and uncomfortable century” (Feyerabend 1975a: 1). Writing in1981, John Fox raised a cynical eyebrow:

As when Lakatos similarly praises Popper, it is easy to suspectindirect self-advertisement: building up one’s opponent so that theannounced victory is taken as winning a world title. (Fox 1981: 92)



With Motterlini’s publication of the Feyerabend/Lakatos correspondence(F&AM), Fox’s suspicions have been amply confirmed. It is quite clearthat Lakatos and Feyerabend were engaged in a self-conscious campaignof mutual boosterism, leading up to a planned epic encounter between afallibilistic rationalism, as represented by Lakatos, and epistemologicalanarchism, as represented by Feyerabend. As Feyerabend put it “I was toattack the rationalist position, Imre was to restate and defend it, makingmincemeat of me in the process” (Feyerabend 1975b: preface). This Battleof the Titans was to consist of Feyerabend’s Against Method and Lakatos’sprojected reply, which is referred to, in their correspondence, by themysterious acronym “MAM”.

Sometimes the mutual boosterism went a bit too far, causing pain anddistress to serious-minded philosophers who regarded Popperian criticalrationalism as a bulwark against a resurgent Nazism:

But although they had interested motives for talking each other up, it isclear that the mutual admiration between Feyerabend’s and Lakatos wasquite sincere. Each genuinely regarded the other as the man to beat.

Feyerabend’s criticism of Lakatos is summed up in his joking dedicationto Against Method: To IMRE LAKATOS Friend and Fellow-Anarchist. Inother words Feyerabend’s charge is that for all his law-and-orderpretensions as a defender of the rationality of science and a critic ofpseudoscience, Lakatos is really an epistemic anarchist malgré lui.

Hans Albert is on the verge of suicide [writes Lakatos toFeyerabend]. Allegedly somebody told him that in Kiel you willdescribe critical rationalism as a “mental disease”, and he thinksthat will be the end of Reason in Germany. I told him that thoughyou are AN EXTREMELY GREAT MAN, that you will not bringNazism back single-handedly…. (F&AM: 291)

Imre Lakatos


Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism is sometimes summed up by theslogan “Anything goes” but that is a little misleading. His point is ratherthis: If you want a set of methodological rules distinguishing betweengood science and bad science, the only thing that won’t exclude some ofwhat you (Dear Reader) regard as the best science is the principle“Anything goes”. Anything else would rule out what is widely regarded assome of the best science as unscientific. Thus a large proportion ofFeyerabend’s Against Method is devoted to “praising” Galileo for hisallegedly anti-Popperian practices and his dodgy (but progressive)rhetorical tricks. Everyone agrees that Galileo was a great scientist. But ifGalileo was great, then the rules that supposedly constitute great scienceare defective since they would exclude some of the greatest of Galileo’sgreat deeds.

But what about Lakatos? Feyerabend poses a dilemma. Suppose we applythe Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes in aconservative or rigouristic spirit. Scientists are urged to abandondegenerating research programmes in favour of the progressive, and grant-giving agencies are urged to defund them. After all, such programmes arecondemned by the Demarcation Criterion as bad science or even non-science! At the very least, the adherents of degenerating researchprogrammes must bear the stigma of irrationality, owning up to theirscientific sins. But in that case Lakatos’s MSRP would be condemningsome research programmes to death as bad science or even non-sciencethat might otherwise recover their progressive (and hence their scientific)status. Thus Lakatos would be vulnerable to the same criticism that hehimself applies to Popper—he would be excluding some of the bestscience as unscientific (that is, research programmes that have suffered adegenerating phase only to stage a magnificent comeback). In response tothis, Lakatos distinguished appraisal from advice, and said that the task ofthe philosopher of science is to issue rules of appraisal, not to advisescientists (or grant-giving agencies) about what they ought to do. The



Demarcation Criterion can evaluate the current state of play but it does nottell anyone what to do about it. (To paraphrase Marx's Thesis XI,“Methodologists hitherto have attempted to change the world of scientificresearch in various ways; the point, however is to appraise it”.) TheMSRP does enjoin a principle of scientific honesty, namely that theadherents of degenerating research programmes should own up to theirmethodological shortcomings, such as the lack of novel predictions or thefalsification of the predictions that they have made. However, so long asthey admit to these failures they can (rationally?) persist in theirdegenerate ways.

But in that case Lakatos is gored by the other horn of Feyerabend’sdilemma. For Feyerabend argues that a Demarcation Criterion that cannottell anyone what to do or not to do is scarcely distinguishable from“Anything goes”. To revert to Feyerabend’s political analogy, what is thedifference between an anarchist society and a “state” where the “police”can appraise people for their “criminal” or “law-abiding” behaviour butcan never make an arrest or send anyone to jail? That’s a “state” whichisn’t a state and a “police force” which isn’t a police force! We have notscientific law-and-order but anarchy, accompanied by uplifting sermonsand benedictions posthumously bestowed on the mighty scientific dead.

What was Lakatos’s response to this dilemma? It is sometimes suggested,not least by Feyerabend himself, that Lakatos did have, or would havehad, an answer but that he did not live to write it up. Their correspondencesuggests otherwise. Although the locus classicus of Feyerabend’sargument is chapter 16 of Against Method (1975b) he had alreadydeveloped his dilemma in “Consolations for the Specialist” (1968) andLakatos had access to successive versions of the argument in thesuccessive drafts that Feyerebend sent him in the last is six years of hislife. Yet there is no trace of a counterargument in Lakatos’s survivingletters to Feyerabend. Instead there are a series of fearsome threats.

Imre Lakatos


However, aside from these threats, a developed answer to Feyerabend’sdilemma is conspicuous by its absence. One is reminded of King Lear:

The upshot is that if there is a Lakatosian answer to Feyerabend’sdilemma, it is an answer that has to be concocted on his behalf. One of ushas a go in Musgrave 1976, but for the Methodology of ScientificResearch Programmes, it is still, very much, an open problem.

Bibliography

Works by Lakatos

1946a: “Citoyen és Munkásosztály” (Citoyen and the working class),Valóság, 1: 77–88.

1946b: “A fizikai Idealizmus Bírálata” (A critique of idealism in physics);a review of Susan Stebbing’s Philosophy and the Physicists,Athenaeum, 1: 28–33.

1947a: “Huszadik Század”, Forum, 1: 316–20.1947b: “Eötvös Collégium—Györffy Kollégium”, Valóság, 2: 107–24.1947c: “Jeges Károly: Megtanulom a fizikát”, Társadalmi Szemle, 1: 472.1947d: “Természettudományos világnézet és demokratikus nevelés”

(Scientific worldview and democratic upbringing), Embernevelés, 2:63-66.

I am now greatly grateful for your depicting me as God andyourself as the Devil. I also return the compliment: for me you arethe only philosopher worth demolishing. But there is one trouble: Ican take you to such little pieces that only an electromicroscopecan discover you again. Will you be very hurt? (F&AM: 268–9)

I will do such things,— What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth.



1947e: “Modern fizika—modern társadalom” (Modern physics—modernsociety), in Kemény Gábor (ed.), Továbbképzés és demokrácia.[There is an English translation of this essay in Kampis et al. 2002:356-368.]

1947f: “‘Haladó tudós’ a demokráciában” (A “progressive scholar” in ademocracy), Tovább, June 13.

1956: Speech at the Pedagogy Debate of the Petőfi Circle on September28, 1956; transcript published in András B. Hegedűs (ed.), A PetőfiKör vitái (The debates of the Petőfi Circle), Vol. VI, Budapest:Intézet and M&uacte;zsák Kiadó, 1992, 34–38. [English translation“On rearing scholars” in Motterlini 1999: 375-381.]

1961: “Essays in the Logic of Mathematical Discovery”. UnpublishedPhD dissertation, Cambridge University.

1962 [Regress]: “Infinite Regress and Foundations of Mathematics”,Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 36: 155–94.[Republished as chapter 1 of Lakatos 1978b (PP2), cited pages fromthis version.]

1963: Discussion of “History of Science as an Academic Discipline” byA.C. Crombie and M.A. Hoskin, in A.C. Crombie (ed.), ScientificChange, London: Heinemann, pp. 781–5. [Republished as chapter 13of Lakatos 1978b (PP2).]

1963–4: “Proofs and Refutations”, in the British Journal for thePhilosophy of Science, 14: 1–25, 120–139, 221–243, 296–342.[Reprinted in Lakatos 1976c (P&R). cited pages from this version.]

1967a [Renaissance]: “A Renaissance of Empiricism in the RecentPhilosophy of Mathematics”, in Lakatos 1967b: 199–202.[Republished in an expanded form as 1978b (PP2), cited pages fromthis version.]

1967b: (ed.), Problems in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Amsterdam:North-Holland.

1968a: “Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research

Imre Lakatos


Programmes”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 69: 149–186.1968b [Changes]: “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic”, in

Lakatos 1968c, 315–417 [Reprinted as chapter 8 of PP2, cited pagesfrom this version.]

1968c: (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic, Amsterdam: North-Holland.1968d: (edited with A. Musgrave) Problems in the Philosophy of Science,

Amsterdam: North-Holland.1968e: “A Letter to the Director of the London School of Economics”, in

C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson (eds.), Fight for Education, A Black Paper,London: Critical Quarterly Society, 28–31. [Republished as chapter12 of Lakatos 1978b (PP2), referred to, in this reprint, as LTD.]

1970a [FMSRP]: “Falsification and the Methodology of ScientificResearch Programmes”, in Lakatos 1970b, 91–196 (Republished aschapter 1 of Lakatos 1978a, PP1, cited pages from this version.)

1970b, editor with A. Musgrave: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1970c: Discussion of “Knowledge and Physical Reality” by A. Mercier, inA.D. Breck and W. Yourgrau (eds.), Physics, Logic and History, NewYork: Plenum Press, pp. 53–4.

1970d: Discussion of ‘Scepticism and the Study of History’ by Richard H.Popkin, in A.D. Breck and W. Yourgrau (eds.), Physics, Logic andHistory, New York: Plenum Press, pp. 220–3.

1971a [HS&IRR]: “The History of Science and its RationalReconstructions”, in R.C. Buck and R.S. Cohen (eds.), PSA 1970:Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 8, Dordrecht: Reidel, pp.91–135. [Republished as chapter 2 of Lakatos 1978a (PP1), citedpages from this version]

1971b: “Replies to Critics”, in R.C. Buck and R.S. Cohen (eds.): PSA1970: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 8, Dordrecht:Reidel, pp. 174–82.

1974a: “Discussion Remarks on Papers by Ne‘eman, Yahil, Beckler,



Sambursky, Elkana, Agassi, Mendelsohn”, in Y. Elkana (ed.), TheInteraction Between Science and Philosophy, Atlantic Highlands,New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp. 41, 155–6, 163, 165, 167, 280–3,285–6, 288–9, 292, 294–6, 427–8, 430–1, 435.

1974b [PDI]: “Popper on Demarcation and Induction”, in P.A. Schilpp(ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, La Salle: Open Court, 241–73.[Republished as chapter 3 of Lakatos 1978a (PP1), cited pages fromthis version.]

1974c: “The Role of Crucial Experiments in Science”, Studies in theHistory and Philosophy of Science, 4: 309–25.

1974d [S&P]: “Science and Pseudoscience”, in Vesey, G. (ed.),Philosophy in the Open, Open University Press. [Republished as theintroduction to Lakatos1978a (PP1), cited pages from this version.]

1976a: [UT] “Understanding Toulmin”, Minerva, 14: 126–43.[Republished as chapter 11 of Lakatos 1978b.]

1976b [Renaissance]: “A Renaissance of Empiricism in the RecentPhilosophy of Mathematics?”, British Journal for the Philosophy ofScience, 27: 201–23. [Republished as chapter 2 of Lakatos 1978b(PP2), cited pages from this version.]

1976c [P&R]: Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of MathematicalDiscovery, J. Worrall and E. Zahar (eds.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press

1976d [WDCRPSP]: “Why Did Copernicus’s Programme SupersedePtolemy’s?”, by I. Lakatos and E.G. Zahar, in R. Westman (ed.), TheCopernican Achievement, Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 354–83. [Republished as chapter 5 of PP1, cited pages fromthis version.]

1978a [PP1]: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes(Philosophical Papers: Volume 1), J. Worrall and G. Currie (eds.),Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1978b [PP2]: Mathematics, Science and Epistemology (Philosophical

Imre Lakatos


Papers: Volume 2), J. Worrall and G. Currie (eds.), Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

1978c: “Cauchy and the Continuum:the Significance of Non-StandardAnalysis for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics”. [Publishedas chapter 5 of PP1]

1999a: “Lectures on Scientific Method” in Motterlini 1999: 19–1091999b: “Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence” in Motterlini 1999: 119–

374.1999c: “On Rearing Scholars” in Motterlini 1999: 375–381.1999d: “The Intellectuals’ Betrayal of Reason” in Motterlini 1999: 393–

397.

Secondary Literature

Ariew, R., 2014, “Pierre Duhem”, The Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy (Fall 2014 edition), E.N. Zalta (ed.). URL=<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/duhem/>

Bandy, A., 2009, Chess and Chocolate: Unlocking Lakatos, Budapest:Akadémiai Kiadó.

Brown, M.B. and G. Priest, 2015, “Chunk and Permeate II: Bohr’sHydrogen Atom”, European Journal for the Philosophy of Science,5(3): 297–314. doi:10.1007/s13194-014-0104-7

Chalmers, A.F., 2013, What Is This Thing Called Science, 4th edition,Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. First edition in 1976.

Cohen, R.S., P.K. Feyerabend, and M.W. Wartofsky (eds.), 1976, Essays inMemory of Imre Lakatos, Boston Studies in the Philosophy ofScience, 39, Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel

Congden, L. 1997, “Possessed: Lakatos”s Road to 1956, ContemporaryEuropean History, 6(3), 279—294.

–––, 2002, “Lakatos’s Political Reawakening” in G. Kampis et al. 2002:339-349.

Dostoevsky, F.M., 1994 [1871–72], Demons, R. Pevear and L. Volkhonsky



(trans.), New York: Knopf.Feyerabend, P.K., 1968, “Consolation for the Specialist” in Lakatos (and

Musgrave) 1970b: 197–230.–––, 1975a, “Imre Lakatos”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,

26: 1–18.–––, 1975b, Against Method, London: New Left Books.Flynn, J.R., 1987, “Massive IQ Gains in Fourteen Nations: What IQ Tests

Really Measure” Psychological Bulletin, 101: 171–191.–––, 2009, What Is Intelligence: Beyond the Flynn Effect, expanded

edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Fox, J., 1981, “Critical notice: Appraising Lakatos”, Australasian Journal

of Philosophy, 59(1): 92–103. doi:10.1080/00048408112340071Gavroglu, K., Y. Goudaroulis, and P. Nicolaccopoulos (eds.), 1989, Imre

Lakatos and Theories of Scientific Change, Boston Studies in thePhilosophy of Science, 111, Dordrecht/Boston/London: KluwerAcademic Publishers.

Godfrey-Smith, P., 2003, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to thePhilosophy of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Hanson, N.R., 1963, “Commentary”, in A.C. Crombie (ed), ScientificChange, London: Heinemann, 458–466.

Hegel, W.G.F., 2008 [1820/21], The Philosophy of Right, Knox andHoulgate (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kolakowski, L., 1978, Main Currents of Marxism (Volume 2: The GoldenAge), P. Falla (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kadvany, J., 2001, Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason, Durham andLondon: Duke University Press.

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Marxist Dialectics, R. Livingstone (trans.), CambridgeMassachusetts: MIT Press.

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Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

Lakatos, webpages on Lakatos at the London School of Economics.From Budapest: the story of Imre Lakatos, at the Philosopher's Zone.

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