Lakatos and Lukács

Abstract

Lakatos constructed his major contribution to the philosophy of science, the methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP) in the late sixties and early seventies in England, when he had already been estranged from the Popperian philosophy of science. In this paper we try to show that his MSRP was motivated by his philosophical and political ideas of the forties and fifties in Hungary, when he was imbued with the communist ideology and was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Lukács. From this point of view the MSRP can be considered as a special representation of Lakatos` earlier political values and praxis in the field of history and philosophy of science.