31 Quotes by Imre Lakatos

Intellectual honesty consists in stating the precise conditions under which one will give up one's belief.

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.

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.

One may rationally stick to a degenerating research programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poor public record... It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk.

No experimental result can ever kill a theory: any theory can be saved from counterinstances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms.

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.

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.

Intellectual honesty consists in stating the precise conditions under which one will give up one’s belief.

Einstein’s results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.