Quotes from Imre Lakatos

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.

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.

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.

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.

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

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.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

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.

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.

T]he problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not a pseudo-problem of armchair philosophers: it has grave ethical and political implications.

Criticism is not a Popperian quick kill, by refutation. Important criticism is always constructive: there is no refutation without a better theory. Kuhn is wrong in thinking that scientific revolutions are sudden, irrational changes in vision. The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: on close inspection both Popperian crucial experiments and Kuhnian revolutions turn out to be myths: what normally happens is that progressive research programmes replace degenerating ones.

Triviality and certainty are Kinderkrankheiten of knowledge.

One can today easily demonstrate that there can be no valid derivation of a law of nature from any finite number of facts; but we still keep reading about scientific theories being proved from facts. Why this stubborn resistance to elementary logic?

Intellectual honesty does not consist in trying to entrench or establish one's position by proving (or 'probabilifying') it - intellectual honesty consists rather in specifying precisely the condi-tions under which one is willing to give up one's position.

Intellectual honesty does not consist in trying to entrench or establish one's position by proving (or 'probabilifying') it - intellectual honesty consists rather in specifying precisely the conditions under which one is willing to give up one's position. Marxists and Freudians refuse to specify such conditions: this is the hallmark of their intellectual dishonesty.

Intellectual honesty does not consist in trying to entrench or establish one's position by proving (or 'probabilifying') it - intellectual honesty consists rather in specifying precisely the conditions under which one is willing to give up one's position. Committed Marxists and Freudians refuse to specify such conditions: this is the hallmark of their intellectual dishonest.

Intellectual honesty does not consist in trying to entrench or establish one's position by proving (or 'probabilifying') it - intellectual honesty consists rather in specifying precisely the conditions under which one is willing to give up one's position. Committed Marxists and Freudians refuse to specify such conditions: this is the hallmark of their intellectual dishonesty

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.

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.