Imre Lakatos
Analytic · Europe · 1922 to 1974
Hungarian-born philosopher who held that science is a contest of research programmes, judged by whether they keep finding new facts.
What it is
Imre Lakatos (1922 to 1974) was a Hungarian-born philosopher of mathematics and science. He was born in Debrecen, took a degree in mathematics, physics and philosophy there in 1944, and fled Hungary in 1956 when Soviet tanks put down the uprising. He rose to prominence in Britain, where he became known as a charismatic teacher and as a fallibilist who opposed elitism and authoritarianism.
He is known for two things. The first is his philosophy of mathematics, set out in the dialogue Proofs and Refutations, which shows how mathematical ideas grow through proofs, counterexamples and revision. The second is his methodology of scientific research programmes, a revision of Karl Popper's account of what separates science from non-science. He died in 1974.
The main ideas
- Mathematics is fallible. Against the view that mathematics is a fixed body of certain truths, he argued that it grows by conjectures, proofs and refutations, as ideas are tested against counterexamples.
- A dialogue form. In Proofs and Refutations, he wrote as a many-sided classroom dialogue, to show how a mathematical idea changes over time.
- Research programmes. Science, he said, should be judged not theory by theory but through longer-running research programmes.
- Revising Popper. He tried to reconcile Popper's falsificationism with what historians of science actually find, and gave a new account of when a science is rational.
- Novel predictions. A theory is pseudoscientific if it fails to predict new phenomena, or if its predictions are mostly refuted.
- Anti-authority. He was a professed foe of elitism and authoritarianism, and a fallibilist who held that any claim can be wrong.
What it looks like in practice
Imagine a class trying to prove that every solid with flat faces satisfies a neat formula, and then a student produces a shape that breaks it. Lakatos would say that this is not a failure of mathematics but how it moves: the class must decide whether to change the claim, the definition or the proof. This is an illustration of his line of questioning, written by us, not a passage from his writing.
Books and moments
- Proofs and Refutations (four articles in 1963 to 1964, a book in 1976) is his dialogue on how mathematics grows.
- The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes sets out his account of science.
- "History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions" (1970) proposes a way to judge theories of scientific method against history.
Questions and criticism
- Who decides when a programme is finished? If a research programme can always be protected, it is fair to ask when it is rational to give it up.
- Is the line between science and pseudoscience clear? His criterion rests on novel predictions, and critics ask how to judge cases such as Darwin's theory, which he himself questioned.
- Rebuilding history. His 1970 proposal for judging methods against the history of science treats history as something to be rationally reconstructed, and it is fair to ask how far such a reconstruction can stay true to what happened.
Close neighbours
Karl Popper is the thinker he set out to revise, and Hegel and Marx shaped his idea of dialectic. The pages on Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend show two philosophers of science whose ideas formed the debate around his own.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Who they connect to
Influenced by
- Karl Popper · He began from Popper's view that science grows by criticism, and gave it a subtler form.
Reacted against
- Thomas Kuhn · He argued that Kuhn's account of scientific change makes it look like mob rule, and gave a more rational one.
Other Analytic thinkers
- Gottlob Frege · 1848 to 1925
- Bertrand Russell · 1872 to 1970
- G. E. Moore · 1873 to 1958
- Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1889 to 1951
- Gilbert Ryle · 1900 to 1976
- Karl Popper · 1902 to 1994
- H. L. A. Hart · 1907 to 1992
- W. V. O. Quine · 1908 to 2000
- J. L. Austin · 1911 to 1960
- Wilfrid Sellars · 1912 to 1989
Sources we used
- Imre Lakatos · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
- Imre Lakatos · Wikipedia, read on 29 October 2026