Imre Lakatos quotes

Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, recognized for his influential theories on the philosophy of science. His work, especially the concept of research programmes, greatly impacted how scientific progress is understood. He inspired generations of philosophers and scientists with his critical and dynamic approach to scientific knowledge. Here are 17 of his quotes:

It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached.

Imre Lakatos

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.

Imre Lakatos

That sometimes clear ... and sometimes vague stuff ... which is ... mathematics.

Imre Lakatos

Where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.

Imre Lakatos

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

Imre Lakatos

Kuhn as does Popper rejects the idea that science grows by accumulation of eternal truths.. But while according to Popper science is ‘revolution in permanence', and criticism the heart of the scientific enterprise, according to Kuhn revolution is exceptional and, indeed, extra-scientific, and criticism is, in ‘normal' times, anathema... The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology. It concerns our central intellectual values, and has implications not only for theoretical physics but also for the underdeveloped social sciences and even for moral and political philosophy. If even in science there is no other way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power. Thus Kuhn's position would vindicate, no doubt, unintentionally, the basic political credo of contemporary religious maniacs (‘student revolutionaries').

Imre Lakatos

For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge... Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced.

Imre Lakatos

For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific theory T is falsified if and only if another theory T' has been proposed with the following characteristics : (1) T' has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T; (2) T' explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is included (within the limits of observable error) in the content of T'; and (3) some of the excess content of T' is corroborated.

Imre Lakatos