MacTutor
Times obituary
Professor Imre Lakatos died suddenly on February 2, at the age of 51. He was the foremost philosopher of mathematics in his generation, a gifted and original philosopher of empirical science, and a forceful and colorful personality.
He was born in Hungary on November 9, 1922. After a brilliant school and university career, he graduated from Debrecen in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy in 1944. Under the Nazi occupation, he joined the underground resistance. He avoided capture, but his mother and grandmother, who had brought him up, were deported and perished in Auschwitz.
After the war, he became a research student at Budapest University. He was briefly associated with Lukacs. At this period, he was a convinced communist. In 1947, he held the post of Secretary in the Ministry of Education and was virtually in charge of the democratic reform of higher education in Hungary. He spent 1949 at Moscow University.
His political prominence soon got him into trouble. He was arrested in the spring of 1950. He used to say afterward that two factors helped him to survive: his unwavering communist faith and his resolve not to fabricate evidence. (He also said, and one believes it, that the strain of interrogation proved too much for one of his interrogators!)
He was released late in 1953. He had no job and had been deprived of all material possessions (with the exception of his watch, which was returned to him and which he wore until his death). In 1954, the mathematician Rényi got him a job in the Mathematical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science translating mathematical works. One of these was Polya's How to Solve It, which introduced him to the subject in which he later became pre-eminent: the logic of mathematical discovery. He now had access to a library containing books, not publicly available, by Western thinkers, including Hayek and Popper. This opened his eyes to the possibility of an approach to social and political questions that was non-Marxist yet scientific. His communist certainties began to dissolve.
After the Hungarian uprising, he escaped to Vienna on Victor Kraft's advice, and with the help of a Rockefeller fellowship, he went to Cambridge to study under Braithwaite and Smiley.
Some years afterwards, when he feared that the principle of academic autonomy was in danger in this country, he wrote:
"As an undergraduate, I witnessed the demands of Nazi students at my university to suppress Jewish-liberal-Marxist influence expressed in the syllabuses. I saw how they, in concord with outside political forces, tried for many years, not without some success, to influence appointments and have sacked teachers who resisted their bandwagon. Later, I was a graduate student at Moscow University when resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party determined syllabuses in genetics and sent the dissenters to death. I also remember when students decreed that Einstein's 'bourgeois relativism' (i.e., his relativity theory) should not be taught."
When he came to England he could speak German and Russian, and read French and English. Now he began to master spoken English. If he never succeeded quite perfectly ("thinking aloud" became "thinking loudly") he did enrich our language with his "body scientific" "monster-barring", "book-act", etc.
In 1958 he met Polya, who introduced him to the history of the "Descartes-Euler conjecture" for his doctorate. This grew into his "Proofs and Refutations" (1963-4), a brilliant imaginary dialogue that recapitulates the historical development. It is full of originality and scholarship. It is a new, quasi-empiricist philosophy of mathematics.
In England, the man whose ideas attracted him most was Professor (now Sir Karl) Popper, whom he joined at LSE in 1960. (There he rose rapidly, becoming Professor of Logic in 1969).
His interests now turned increasingly to the methodology of the physical sciences. In 1965, he organized a famous colloquium in London, which brought together outstanding thinkers from all over the world in logic and methodology.
His proceedings, in four volumes, contained two major papers of his, each constructively critical of the philosophies of science of Carnap and of Popper. He accepted many of Popper's ideas, but he felt that Popper's critical philosophy must itself be subjected to searching criticism; and he now developed a distinctive methodology—his "methodology of scientific research programs in which philosophy of science is more intimately related to the actual history of scientific discovery
When he lectured, the room would be crowded, the atmosphere electric, and from time to time there would be a gale of laughter. He inspired a group of young scholars to do original research: he would often spend days with them on their manuscripts before publication. With his sharp tongue and strong opinions, he sometimes seemed authoritarian: but he was open to everyone and invited searching criticism of his ideas and of his writings, over which he took endless trouble before they were finally allowed to appear in print.
From 1964 onward, he was a frequent visitor to the USA. He kept up a huge correspondence. He was not without enemies; for he was a fighter and went for the things he believed in fearlessly and tirelessly. But he had friends all over the world who will be deeply shocked by his untimely death.
_____________________________________________
Professor Ernest Gellner writes:
The death of Imre Lakatos deprives philosophy and the London School of Economics of one of the most brilliant thinkers and lecturers of the middle generation. He once re-marked—I wish I had noted his precise words—that his life could be summed up as a progression from George Lukacz to Karl Popper. Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the precise form of words used, but the implication seemed to be that this would be a fitting epitaph for him.
It is a sign of his stature that he had been a star member of the most important Marxist school of thought of this century, and subsequently also a major contributor to the finest intellectual liberal movement of the day. The particular quality of his brilliance reflected the blending of these two traditions.
He lectured on a difficult, abstract subject riddled with technicalities, the philosophy and history of mathematics and science; but he did so in a way which made it intelligible, fascinating, dramatic, and above all conspicuously amusing even for non-specialists. This achievement owed much to his combination of backgrounds, and he could comment with irony on the cohabitation of a Popperian ultra-liberal and a questionably weaned ex-Marxist within his breast. Making plain to his audience how some bits of mathematics could only be understood through its history, he would observe in a wry deadpan aside that the idea that mathematics has a history is of course well known to be only an Hegelian prejudice ...
His tragic death leaves intellectual life very much poorer.
Professor Imre Lakatos died suddenly on February 2, at the age of 51. He was the foremost philosopher of mathematics in his generation, a gifted and original philosopher of empirical science, and a forceful and colorful personality.
He was born in Hungary on November 9, 1922. After a brilliant school and university career, he graduated from Debrecen in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy in 1944. Under the Nazi occupation, he joined the underground resistance. He avoided capture, but his mother and grandmother, who had brought him up, were deported and perished in Auschwitz.
After the war, he became a research student at Budapest University. He was briefly associated with Lukacs. At this period, he was a convinced communist. In 1947, he held the post of Secretary in the Ministry of Education and was virtually in charge of the democratic reform of higher education in Hungary. He spent 1949 at Moscow University.
His political prominence soon got him into trouble. He was arrested in the spring of 1950. He used to say afterward that two factors helped him to survive: his unwavering communist faith and his resolve not to fabricate evidence. (He also said, and one believes it, that the strain of interrogation proved too much for one of his interrogators!)
He was released late in 1953. He had no job and had been deprived of all material possessions (with the exception of his watch, which was returned to him and which he wore until his death). In 1954, the mathematician Rényi got him a job in the Mathematical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science translating mathematical works. One of these was Polya's How to Solve It, which introduced him to the subject in which he later became pre-eminent: the logic of mathematical discovery. He now had access to a library containing books, not publicly available, by Western thinkers, including Hayek and Popper. This opened his eyes to the possibility of an approach to social and political questions that was non-Marxist yet scientific. His communist certainties began to dissolve.
After the Hungarian uprising, he escaped to Vienna on Victor Kraft's advice, and with the help of a Rockefeller fellowship, he went to Cambridge to study under Braithwaite and Smiley.
Some years afterwards, when he feared that the principle of academic autonomy was in danger in this country, he wrote:
"As an undergraduate, I witnessed the demands of Nazi students at my university to suppress Jewish-liberal-Marxist influence expressed in the syllabuses. I saw how they, in concord with outside political forces, tried for many years, not without some success, to influence appointments and have sacked teachers who resisted their bandwagon. Later, I was a graduate student at Moscow University when resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party determined syllabuses in genetics and sent the dissenters to death. I also remember when students decreed that Einstein's 'bourgeois relativism' (i.e., his relativity theory) should not be taught."
When he came to England he could speak German and Russian, and read French and English. Now he began to master spoken English. If he never succeeded quite perfectly ("thinking aloud" became "thinking loudly") he did enrich our language with his "body scientific" "monster-barring", "book-act", etc.
In 1958 he met Polya, who introduced him to the history of the "Descartes-Euler conjecture" for his doctorate. This grew into his "Proofs and Refutations" (1963-4), a brilliant imaginary dialogue that recapitulates the historical development. It is full of originality and scholarship. It is a new, quasi-empiricist philosophy of mathematics.
In England, the man whose ideas attracted him most was Professor (now Sir Karl) Popper, whom he joined at LSE in 1960. (There he rose rapidly, becoming Professor of Logic in 1969).
His interests now turned increasingly to the methodology of the physical sciences. In 1965, he organized a famous colloquium in London, which brought together outstanding thinkers from all over the world in logic and methodology.
His proceedings, in four volumes, contained two major papers of his, each constructively critical of the philosophies of science of Carnap and of Popper. He accepted many of Popper's ideas, but he felt that Popper's critical philosophy must itself be subjected to searching criticism; and he now developed a distinctive methodology—his "methodology of scientific research programs in which philosophy of science is more intimately related to the actual history of scientific discovery
When he lectured, the room would be crowded, the atmosphere electric, and from time to time there would be a gale of laughter. He inspired a group of young scholars to do original research: he would often spend days with them on their manuscripts before publication. With his sharp tongue and strong opinions, he sometimes seemed authoritarian: but he was open to everyone and invited searching criticism of his ideas and of his writings, over which he took endless trouble before they were finally allowed to appear in print.
From 1964 onward, he was a frequent visitor to the USA. He kept up a huge correspondence. He was not without enemies; for he was a fighter and went for the things he believed in fearlessly and tirelessly. But he had friends all over the world who will be deeply shocked by his untimely death.
_____________________________________________
Professor Ernest Gellner writes:
The death of Imre Lakatos deprives philosophy and the London School of Economics of one of the most brilliant thinkers and lecturers of the middle generation. He once re-marked—I wish I had noted his precise words—that his life could be summed up as a progression from George Lukacz to Karl Popper. Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the precise form of words used, but the implication seemed to be that this would be a fitting epitaph for him.
It is a sign of his stature that he had been a star member of the most important Marxist school of thought of this century, and subsequently also a major contributor to the finest intellectual liberal movement of the day. The particular quality of his brilliance reflected the blending of these two traditions.
He lectured on a difficult, abstract subject riddled with technicalities, the philosophy and history of mathematics and science; but he did so in a way which made it intelligible, fascinating, dramatic, and above all conspicuously amusing even for non-specialists. This achievement owed much to his combination of backgrounds, and he could comment with irony on the cohabitation of a Popperian ultra-liberal and a questionably weaned ex-Marxist within his breast. Making plain to his audience how some bits of mathematics could only be understood through its history, he would observe in a wry deadpan aside that the idea that mathematics has a history is of course well known to be only an Hegelian prejudice ...
His tragic death leaves intellectual life very much poorer.
