pdf version of the entry Imre Lakatos https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/lakatos/ Imre Lakatos from the Winter 2016 Edition of the First published Mon Apr 4, 2016 Stanford Encyclopedia Imre Lakatos (1922–1974) was a Hungarian-born philosopher of mathematics and science who rose to prominence in Britain, having fled of Philosophy his native land in 1956 when the Hungarian Uprising was suppressed by Soviet tanks. He was notable for his anti-formalist philosophy of mathematics (where “formalism” is not just the philosophy of Hilbert and his followers but also comprises logicism and intuitionism) and for his “Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” or MSRP, a radical Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen R. Lanier Anderson revision of Popper’s Demarcation Criterion between science and non- Principal Editor Senior Editor Associate Editor Faculty Sponsor science which gave rise to a novel theory of scientific rationality. Editorial Board https://plato.stanford.edu/board.html Although he lived and worked in London, rising to the post of Professor of Library of Congress Catalog Data Logic at the London School of Economics (LSE), Lakatos never became a ISSN: 1095-5054 British citizen, but died a stateless person. Despite the star-studded array of academic lords and knights who were willing to testify on his behalf, Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to mem- neither MI5 nor the Special Branch seem to have trusted him, and no less bers of the Friends of the SEP Society and by courtesy to SEP content contributors. It is solely for their fair use. Unauthorized a person than Roy Jenkins, the then Home Secretary, signed off on the distribution is prohibited. To learn how to join the Friends of the refusal to naturalize him. (See Bandy 2009: ch. 16, which includes the SEP Society and obtain authorized PDF versions of SEP entries, transcripts of successive interrogations.) please visit https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ . Nonetheless, Lakatos’s influence, particularly in the philosophy of science, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been immense. According to Google Scholar, by the 25th of January Copyright c 2016 by the publisher 2015, that is, just twenty-five days into the new year, thirty-three papers The Metaphysics Research Lab Center for the Study of Language and Information had been published citing Lakatos in that year alone, a citation rate of Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 over one paper per day. Introductory texts on the Philosophy of Science Imre Lakatos typically include substantial sections on Lakatos, some admiring, some Copyright c 2016 by the authors Alan Musgrave and Charles Pigden critical, and many an admixture of the two (see for example Chalmers All rights reserved. 2013 and Godfrey-Smith 2003). The premier prize for the best book in the Copyright policy: https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/info/copyright/ Philosophy of Science (funded by the foundation of a wealthy and 1 Imre Lakatos Alan Musgrave and Charles Pigden academically distinguished disciple, Spiro Latsis) is named in his honour. interpretation. We are more ambivalent with respect to the Philosophy of Moreover, Lakatos is one of those philosophers whose influence extends Mathematics.) well beyond the confines of academic philosophy. Of the thirty-three papers citing Lakatos published in the first twenty-five days of 2015, at Secondly we discuss Lakatos’s big ideas, the two contributions that most ten qualify as straight philosophy. The rest are devoted to such topics constitute his chief claims to fame as a philosopher, before moving on as educational theory, international relations, public policy research (with (thirdly) to a more detailed discussion of some of his principal papers. We special reference to the development of technology), informatics, design conclude with a section on the Feyerabend/Lakatos Debate. Lakatos was a science, religious studies, clinical psychology, social economics, political provocative and combative thinker, and it falsifies his thought to present it economy, mathematics, the history of physics and the sociology of the as less controversial (and perhaps less outrageous) than it actually was. family. Thus Imre Lakatos was very much more than a philosophers’ Note: In referring to Lakatos’s chief works (and to a couple of Popper’s) philosopher. we have employed a set of acronyms rather than the name/date system, First, we discuss Lakatos’s life in relation to his works. Lakatos’s hoping that this will be more perspicuous to readers. The acronyms are Hungarian career has now become a big issue in the critical literature. This explained in the Bibliography. is partly because of disturbing facts about Lakatos’s early life that have 1. Life only come to light in the West since his death, and partly because of a 1.1 A Tale of Two Lakatoses dispute between the “Hungarian” and the “English” interpreters of 1.2 Life and Works: The Third World and the Second Lakatos’s thought, between those writers (not all of them Magyars) who 1.3 From Stalinist Revolutionary to Methodologist of Science take the later Lakatos to be much more of a Hegelian (and perhaps much 2. Lakatos’s Big Ideas more of a disciple of György Lukács) than he liked to let on, and those 2.1 Against Formalism in Mathematics who take his Hegelianism to be an increasingly residual affair, not much 2.2 Improving on Popper in the Philosophy of Science more, in the end, than a habit of “coquetting” with Hegelian expressions 3. Works (Marx, Capital: 103). Just as there are analytic Marxists who think that 3.1 Proofs and Refutations (1963–4, 1976) Marx’s thought can be rationally reconstructed without the Hegelian 3.2 “Regress” and “Renaissance” coquetry and dialectical Marxists who think that it cannot, so also there 3.3 “Changes in the Problem of Inductive Logic” (1968) are analytic Lakatosians who think that Lakatos’s thought can be largely 3.4 “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research reconstructed without the Hegelian coquetry and dialectical Lakatosians Programmes” (1970) who think that it cannot (see for instance Kadvany 2001 and Larvor 1998). 3.5 “The History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions” Obviously, we cannot settle the matter in an Encyclopedia entry but we (1971) hope to say enough to illuminate the issue. (Spoiler alert: so far as the 3.6 “Popper on Demarcation and Induction” (1974) Philosophy of Science is concerned, we tend to favor the English 3.7 “Why Did Copernicus’s Research Programme Supersede 2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2016 Edition 3 Imre Lakatos Alan Musgrave and Charles Pigden Ptolemy’s?” (1976) fallibilist, the young Lakatos displayed a cocksure self-confidence in his 4. Mincemeat Unmade: Lakatos versus Feyerabend grasp of the historical situation, enough to exclude any alternative solution Bibliography to the admittedly appalling problems that this group of young and mostly Works by Lakatos Jewish communists were facing in Nazi-occupied Hungary. (“Is there no Secondary Literature other way?” the young comrade asked. The answer, apparently, was “No”; Academic Tools Long 2002: 267.) After the Soviet victory, during the late 1940s, he was an Other Internet Resources eager co-conspirator in the creation of a Stalinist state, in which the Related Entries denunciation of deviationists was the order of the day (Bandy 2009: ch. 9). Lakatos was something close to a thought policeman himself, with a powerful job in the Ministry of Education, vetting university teachers for 1. Life their political reliability (Bandy 2009: ch. 8; Long 2002: 272–3; Congden 1997). Later on, after falling afoul of the regime that he had helped to 1.1 A Tale of Two Lakatoses establish and doing time in a gulag at Recsk, he served the ÁVH, the Hungarian secret police, as an informant by keeping tabs on his friends Imre Lakatos was a warm and witty friend and a charismatic and inspiring and comrades (Bandy 2009: ch. 14; Long 2002). And he took a prominent teacher (see Feyerabend 1975a). He was also a fallibilist, and a professed part, as a Stalinist student radical, in trying to purge the University of foe of elitism and authoritarianism, taking a dim view of what he Debrecen of “reactionary” professors and students and in undermining the described as the Wittgensteinian “thought police” (owing to the Orwellian prestigious but unduly independent Eötvös College, arguing passionately tendency on the part of some Wittgensteinians to suppress dissent by against the depoliticized (but covertly bourgeois) scholarship that Eötvös constricting the language, dismissing the stuff that they did not like as allegedly stood for (Bandy 2009: chs. 4 and 9; Long 1998 and 2002). inherently meaningless) (UT: 225 and 228–36). In the later (and British) phase of his career he was a dedicated opponent of Marxism who played a 1.2 Life and Works: The Second World and the Third prominent part in opposing the socialist student radicals at the LSE in 1968, arguing passionately against the politicization of scholarship (LTD; To the many that knew and loved the later Lakatos, some of these facts are Congden 2002). difficult to digest. But how relevant are they to assessing his philosophy, which was largely the product of his British years? This is an important But in the earlier and Hungarian phase of his life, Lakatos was a Stalinist question as Lakatos was wont to draw a Popperian distinction between revolutionary, the leader of a communist cell who persuaded a young World 3—the world of theories, propositions and arguments—and World 2 comrade that it was her duty to the revolution to commit suicide, since —the psychological world of beliefs, decisions and desires. And he was otherwise she was likely to be arrested by the Nazis and coerced into sometimes inclined to suggest that in assessing a philosopher’s work we betraying the valuable young cadres who constituted the group (Bandy should confine ourselves to World 3 considerations, leaving the 2009: ch.