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Thomas Kuhn, 18 July 1922 to 17 June 1996
Thomas Samuel Kuhn is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn’s contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. -
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Imre Lakatos, 9 November 1922 to 2 Febuary 1974
Imre Lakatos (1922–1974) was a Hungarian-born philosopher of mathematics and science who rose to prominence in Britain, having fled his native land in 1956 when the Hungarian Uprising was suppressed by Soviet tanks. He was notable for his anti-formalist philosophy of mathematics. As well as Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” or MSRP, a radical revision of Popper’s Demarcation Criterion between science and non-science which gave rise to a novel theory of scientific rationality. -
Kuhn Publishes Copernican Revolution
Kuhn's first book The Copernican Revolution was a history of science text focusing on the paradigm shift from Ptolemy to Copernican cosmological models. -
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn paints a picture of the development of science quite unlike any other that had gone before. Indeed, before Kuhn, there was little by way of a carefully considered, theoretically explained account of scientific change. -
Lakatos Proofs and Refutations
Four articles written from 1963 to 1964 were posthumously compiled into a book by the same title in 1976. The title is an allusion to a famous paper of Popper’s, “Conjectures and Refutations”. This is to make the point that the development of mathematics is similar to the development of science. These articles were a critique of formalist philosophies and centered on the notion that math is an ever-evolving subject that started on shaky ground and developed the foundations it now rests upon. -
Lakatos “Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”
A radical revision of Popper’s Demarcation Criterion between science and non-science, leading to a novel theory of scientific rationality. Lakatos objects that Popper’s criterion is far too restrictive since it would rule out too much of everyday scientific practice. Mainly centering on the notion that an incomplete model that represents an improvement in knowledge can be kept even if it has known flaws, theories with holes are preferable to stagnancy.
