-
Lakatos at birth
Imre Lakatos was born in 1922 as Imre Lipschitz. He was born to a Jewish family in Hungary and would later make several changes to his last name. -
World War Two
In 1944 Lakatos (Lipshitz at the time) changed his last name to Molnar to avoid being identified as a person of Jewish decent based upon his family name. Much of his family was killed in concentration camps during the war. -
Hungarian Government
Following the war Lakatos officially changed his last name to what we all know it as today. With Hungary no longer under Nazi rule Lakatos, an active communist, got a job working with the Hungarian government where he was a loyal yet outspoken member of the Communist party. -
Lakatos in Jail
In 1947 after burning bridges due to his open and outspoken nature, Lakatos was jailed and remained in jail for three years until shortly after the death of Stalin. While he was in a detention camp he remained a loyal Communist. This was also a period where we see a lull in his access to education. -
Lakatos and Popper
In 1956 Lakatos was released from jail and began frantically trying to catch up academically on what he had missed in the last three years. It was during this time that Lakatos was first introduced to Popper and his theories of falsifiability. More specifically, he read that according the poppers work the Marxist movement had been scientifically falsified. This prompted him to leave Marxism and begin reinventing himself. -
Cambridge University
Lakatos left Hungary and moved to England where he began studying for his PhD at Cambridge University. During this time he worked very diligently to shed his Communist past, work with the revisionist movement, and establish himself in the world of math, science, and philosophy. -
London School of Economics
In 1960 Lakatos got a job teaching at the London School of Economics in Poppers department. It was during his time here that he began writing the majority of his well known papers. -
Primary Work
Among his most well known work is a paper titles, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" published in 1965. This paper is considered his biggest philosophical contribution. It is based upon the ideas of both science and non-science and the idea that both Popper and Kuhn were neither completely right or completely wrong in their theories on the matter. He believed they were both too restrictive in their views on science. -
Following his Death
It is said that the reason Lakatos never formally published his works into the format of a book was because he planned to continue revising and revisiting his theories. In 1976 a couple of years after his death, his major works were compiled and published as a book. That book was titled, "I Lakatos: Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery." -
Youtube video link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-sGqBsWv4
Here is the link to a short youtube video about Popper that includes some of his study on Marxism. -
Sources
Baggott, Jim. “Imre Lakatos and the Philosophy of Bad Science – Jim Baggott: Aeon Essays.” Aeon, Aeon, 4 Apr. 2021, aeon.co/essays/imre-lakatos-and-the-philosophy-of-bad-science. “Imre Lakatos (Author of Proofs and Refutations).” Goodreads, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/author/show/79831.Imre_Lakatos. O'Connor, J J, and E F Robertson. “Imre Lakatos - Biography.” Maths History, Oct. 2003, mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Lakatos/.