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The history of mathematics, lacking the guidance of philosophy, [is] blind, while the philosophy of mathematics, turning its back on the most intriguing phenomena in the history of mathematics, is empty.

Imre Lakatos

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Imre Lakatos
Age: 51 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: February 2
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
University Teacher
Imre Lipschitz
Lakatos Imre
Imre Lakatos
Philosophy
Intriguing
History
Phenomena
Back
Lacking
Guidance
Turning
Mathematics
Blind
Empty

More quotes by Imre Lakatos

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There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.
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Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.
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The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.
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Man's respect for knowledge is one of his most peculiar characteristics. Knowledge in Latin is scientia, and science came to be the name of the most respectable kind of knowledge.
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Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.
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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.
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Belief may be a regrettably unavoidable biological weakness to be kept under the control of criticism: but commitment is for Popper an outright crime.
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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.
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Mathematics does not grow through a monotonous increase of the number of indubitably established theorems but through the incessant improvement of guesses by speculation and criticism, by the logic of proofs and refutations.
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The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the skeptics more than two thousand years ago but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics.
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The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.
Imre Lakatos
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Intellectual honesty consists in stating the precise conditions under which one will give up one's belief.
Imre Lakatos
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It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT.
Imre Lakatos
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The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.
Imre Lakatos
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Philosophy of science without history of science is empty history of science without philosophy of science is blind.
Imre Lakatos
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In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts
Imre Lakatos