I was reading up on Lakatos and his ideas to improve on the demarcation criteria proposed by Popper and the attempts to reconcile it with Kuhn. Can someone give me an overview or direct me to some relevant papers?
Although philosophy of mathematics isn't something that is actively taught at my university (afaik one can minor in philosophy, but I don't know anyone who does this), I still feel like it is something every mathematician should have at least a passing acquaintance with (I feel like it is not an overstatement to say mathematics has deep ties to philosophy).
To this end I've been thinking of trying Lakatos' "Proofs and Refutations", which led me to the following 2 questions: is it advisable for a maths undergrad (with no experience in philosophy) to read this, i.e. how worthwhile is it to someone at the beginning of their mathematical journey, and whether there any other books on the philosophy of mathematics (or perhaps philosophy in general) every mathematician should read. I've heard of Hofstadter's GEB, but I have misgivings about sacrificing what little free time I have to reading it, considering just how long it is.
I'm really struggling with finding/understanding the essence of what Lakatos is saying about how to identify what science is, and what pseudoscience is.
Gottverdammt this internet cafe is a dump! Melange never arrives, internet runs sporadically, opening hours whenever they feel like it - it's pretty much anything goes around here.
Yeah GrΓΌΓ Gott. It's Paul Feyerabend. Yeah I'm dead right? Well yes ... but the empiricists will be floored to learn that Plato was right all along. We dead thinkers all get to exist in this transcendental realm. That's the good news. The bad news (apart from all the damn pure mathematicians taking the best desks) is that the quantum consciousness crazies were right also. Yeah yeah I know, s'what I said too - WTF? But I tell you - if they don't start implementing high speed neuronal entanglement into our local internet network, I'm seriously going to this collapse this joint. The decoherence is making it worse than #%$@ dialup here.
So what else is it like here? You'd think there would be lots of elite thinkers to hang around. Turns out we're all here to exorcise our erroneous earthly assumptions. Einstein spends most of his time playing craps at the local casino, Newton owns his own brewery and Dick Feynman runs the aviary (heard he is quite useful there too). Old man Popper has still not made it here - got into a lot of trouble for falsifying his entry application. Kurt Goedel also got stuck - his was just incomplete - couldn't prove his own residency.
So anyway, was zum Teufel am I doing here on Reddit? I'm actually trying to find a friend of mine and resolve a dispute. 36 years ago we were just about ready to publish a book written together but he died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage (not surprised frankly - his crazy attempts to unify the old man's theories with Tom Kuhn's would have made anyone's brain explode).
As I wrote in my book "Against Method" :
> We have to conclude then, that even within science, reason cannot and should not be allowed to be comprehensive and that it must often be overruled or eliminated in favour of other agencies. There is not a single rule that remains valid under all circumstances and not a single agency to which an appeal can always be made. Even Lakatos' ingenious methodology does not escape this indictment.
[Imre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_
... keep reading on reddit β‘Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science who studied under Popper at the London School of Economics. Some influential philosophers believe the Lakatosian approach to the philosophy of science is still unsuperceded.
Lakatos, in my reading, tried to reconcile Popper's falsificationism with the actual practice of science as expounded by Thomas Kuhn. Lakatos rejected Kuhn's notions of scientific revolutions as unrealistic and Popper's falsificationism as naive. Instead, Lakatos argued that theories are couched in a "protective belt" of auxiliary hypotheses which can be modified to rescue the core theory when empirical evidence appears to run contrary to the theory's predictions. He called the combination of this core theory with the protective belt of assumptions a "research program".
He divides these research programs into "progressive" and "degenerating" research programs. Progressive research programs all predict novel facts - either undreampt of, or contradicted by rival programs. In degenerating research programs, theories are modified only in order to accommodate known facts. He then argues that scientific revolutions rarely occur as dramatically as Kuhn describes - research programs degenerate over time and are replaced by progressive research programs.
In some sense then you could view Lakatos' philosophy as a historiographical upgrade to Popperian falsificationism to reflect the way that science occurs in practice.
Anyway don't take my word for it - you can hear him speak about it. If this interests you at all, you absolutely must listen to the recording of his "Science and Pseudoscience" lecture at LSE (mp3) in 1974 shortly before he died suddenly at age 51. It is only 20 minutes long and succinctly captures his entire philosophy of science. Lakatos reputedly was an entertaining speaker, much respected and liked by his academic adversaries (like Paul Feyerabend). You might find his voice a little difficult to understand but I really appreciated his dramatic, very Hungarian style of speaking. More information on the talk can be found here.
Some notable (sometimes funny) quotes :
> "All theories are born refuted and die refuted".
> "All programs g
... keep reading on reddit β‘As promised earlier, I present to you and your methodological elvtΓ‘rs, my simple challenge :
Detail for me a methodology of any form or structure that you believe science should or does emulate, and I will respond with a historic counterexample which demonstrates that, had your methodology been adopted, it would have been disastrous for scientific progress.
As for your scientific research program methodology, you disappoint me with your similarities of conceptual structure as the old man. You both simply detest adhoc responses to anomalies. If an ad-hoc hypothesis is invented to rescue a scientific program that does not generate new novel predictions (try defining "novel" as well), you equate this with pseudo-science.
We can both agree modern science has developed mathematical structures which exceed anything that has existed so far in coherence, generality and empirical success. But in order to achieve this miracle, all the existing empirical troubles had to be pushed into the relation between theory and fact and had to be concealed, by ad hoc hypotheses, ad hoc approximations and other procedures.
Von Neumann's work in quantum mechanics is an especially instructive example of this procedure. In order to arrive at a satisfactory proof of the expansion theorem in Hilbert Space, von Neumann replaced the quasi-intuitive notions of Dirac (and Bohr) by more complex notions of his own. The theoretical relations between the new notions are amenable to a more rigorous treatment than the theoretic relations between the notions that preceded them. The situation is different in relation to experimental procedures. No measuring instruments can be specified for the great majority of observables, and where specification is possible it becomes necessary to modify well-known and unrefuted laws in an arbitrary way or else to admit that some quite ordinary problems of quantum mechanics, such as the scattering problem, do not have a solution. Thus the theory becomes a veritable monster of rigour and precision while at the same time, its relation to experience is more obscure than ever.
So drop the mathematically formulated theory because of its degenerative character? Auf keinen Fall! The Hilbert Space formulation forms the very mathematical basis of modern q
... keep reading on reddit β‘Most of the Economic theory that I have studied in an academic environment has been in the Neo-Classical tradition.
I am looking to read critiques of Neo-Classical economics. All perspectives are welcome (such as Imre Lakatos' critique) but critiques from an economic theory perspective would be a bit more preferable.
Thank you!
Do your worst!
It really does, I swear!
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies π
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
Theyβre on standbi
Buenosdillas
Pilot on me!!
Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.
This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.
If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.
Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.
When I got home, they were still there.
What did 0 say to 8 ?
" Nice Belt "
So What did 3 say to 8 ?
" Hey, you two stop making out "
I won't be doing that today!
You take away their little brooms
This morning, my 4 year old daughter.
Daughter: I'm hungry
Me: nerves building, smile widening
Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.
She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.
Thank you all for listening.
There hasn't been a post all year!
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Most of the Economic theory that I have studied in an academic environment has been in the Neo-Classical tradition.
I am looking to read critiques of Neo-Classical economics. All perspectives are welcome (such as Imre Lakatos' critique) but critiques from an economic theory perspective would be a bit more preferable.
Thank you!
