Imre Lakatos

Abstract

Lakatos was born in 1922 to a Jewish family in Debrecen, Hungary and died in London in 1974 of heart failure at the age of 51. His works are in three areas, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of science (especially economics) and a political pamphlet or two on the students’ uprising at the London School of Economics (regrettably ignored here). A superior philosopher of mathematics, he is better known for his philosophy of science despite its questionable value. It consists of little more than an incoherent collage of slogans from two great philosophers of the time, Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi. He moved gradually away from the former towards the latter. He died too young to formulate his views definitively.