| Description | Papers and notes by Professor Lakatos on the philosophy of mathematics and science, including notes on Feyerabend, Kuhn and Popper; correspondence with many academics and philosophers; papers relating to the International Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science organised by Lakatos in 1965; and biographical material, desk diaries, press cuttings, and papers relating to student politics and the LSE 'troubles'. |
| Admin History | Imre Lakatos, 1922-1974, was born in Hungary with the family name of Lipsitz. He attended Debrecen University and graduated in mathematics, physics and philosophy in 1944. During the Nazi occupation of Hungary, he changed his name to Molnar and joined the underground resistance. During the second world war he became a committed communist and after the war changed his name again, this time to Lakatos. In 1947, he was made a secretary in the Ministry of Education and became involved in the reform of higher education in Hungary. In 1948, he wrote a doctoral thesis on concept formation in science, receiving his degree from Debrecen University. However his political prominence and "revisionist" tendencies meant that he fell foul of the campaign against the "Hungarian Titoists". He was arrested in 1950 and spent the next three years in jail. He was released in 1953, and in 1954 Alfred Renyi obtained a post for him in the Mathematical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science. His job was to translate important mathematical works into Hungarian, including work by George Polya.
After the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Lakatos was informed of the likelihood of his re-arrest and so fled to Vienna. Whilst there he was awarded a three year Rockefeller fellowship and went to Kings College, Cambridge, to study under Richard Braithwaite. In 1958 he met George Polya, who advised him to prepare a case study of the "Descartes-Euler conjecture" for his doctorate. This later grew into his book "Proofs and Refutations". He joined Professor Popper's department at the LSE in 1960 and rose rapidly to become Professor of Logic in 1969. He became increasingly interested in methodology and in 1965 he organised the International Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science. He also edited the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. |
| Arrangement | The arrangement of the archive is based on (i) published papers, and (ii) completed but unpublished papers. Each paper has a file which contains as many versions of it as have been found, including original manuscripts, typescripts and, in the cases of the published papers, an offprint or photocopy. All references to Lakatos's published papers are given in the form of a date eg 1976d, and refer to the bibliography.
There were many notes found amongst Lakatos's literary remains. Where these were clearly associated with a particular paper they have been filed together with the paper. Notes not clearly associated with particular papers are collected under general section headings eg. Section 2: Early Notes on Mathematics and the Philosophy of Mathematics.
A red tab on a file within any box indicates that that file is not Lakatos's own, but has been created by the archivists. It should be noted that wherever Lakatos had filed notes together they have been left together.
Most of the papers which Lakatos published in his lifetime, together with some papers which he intended to publish but for various reasons did not, have been collected together in the following three volumes:
'Imre Lakatos: Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery', edited by John Worrall and Elie Zahar (Cambridge, 1976).
'Imre Lakatos: The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes', volume 1, edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Imre Lakatos: Mathematics, Science and Epistemology: Philosophical Papers, volume 2, edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Cambridge, [1978]).
This collection is arranged in sixteen sections:
1. Papers published in Hungary, 1945-1956.
2. Early notes on mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics,1945-1956.
3. Essays in the logic of mathematical discovery and the philosophy of mathematics, 1961-1976.
4. Other papers in the philosophy of mathematics, 1956-1976.
5. Early papers in the philosophy of science, 1957-1978.
6. Middle-period papers in the philosophy of science, 1965-1971.
7. Later papers in the philosophy of science, 1969-1976.
8. Papers on general philosophy, 1967-1976.
9. Lectures, 1973-1974.
10. Notes on Feyerabend, Kuhn and Popper, 1960-1970.
11. Miscellaneous (includes biographical material, desk diaries, press cuttings and papers relating to the LSE 'troubles'), 1960-1976.
12. Selected correspondence (photocopies made prior to the opening of section 13 in its entirety), 1959-1974.
13. Correspondence, 1953-1974 (an item level catalogue is not currently available of this section).
14. International Colloquium on the Philosophy of Science, 1963-1968.
15. Additional papers: correspondence, papers and personal documents (including photographs), 1936-1974.
16. Additional papers deposited by Alex Bellamy, 1964-1970s. |