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Lakatos was born Imre Lipsitz in Debrecen to a Jewish family. This would affect his life immensely as the world events that would transpire during his lifetime.
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His father was a strict observer of the Jewish Sabbath and from 1932 Lakatos attended a Jewish Realgymnasium (a secondary school with emphasis on the sciences) (Larvor, 1998).
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In 1944 Lakatos received a degree in mathematics, physics, and philosophy (Imre Lakatos - New World Encyclopedia, n.d.). This was the same year that the Nazis occupied Hungary. As a result, Lakatos was forced to go under the name of Imre Molnár to avoid Jewish persecution.
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He adopted the name of Lakatos ('Locksmith') early in 1945, sometime after the Russian invasion of Hungary. About this time he converted to Calvinism which he viewed as the Hungarian form of Christianity (Larvor, 1998).
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Lakatos was appointed Secretary of the Ministry of Education with responsibility for the 'democratic reform of higher education' (Larvor, 1998). He was chosen for this position by the Hungarian Communist party as he had adopted the views of a committed Marxist.
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Lakatos traveled to study at Moscow University in 1949 where he would begin his long journey that would result in his doctorate.
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He was arrested, charged with 'revisionism' and imprisoned for almost four years (including one year of solid confinement (Larvor, 1998).
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On his release (from incarceration) Lakatos returned to academia. Lakatos worked on probability and measure - theory under mathematician Alfred Renyi (Larvor, 1998).
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Gabor Vadja reports that in the summer of 1956 Lakatos asked repeatedly 'What is Marxism?' When friends and colleagues offered replies, Lakatos retorted, 'You are speaking about objective knowledge or scientific method. Why do you insist on calling it Marxism?' (Larvor, 1998).
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Shortly after his statement with the Young Communist party the soviets squashed the uprising. Lakatos fled to Vienna and later reached England (Imre Lakatos - New World Encyclopedia, n.d.)
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Lakatos, while still having Marxist beliefs, joined the Young Communist Organization. Producing a statement written by Lakatos and two others, it called on academics and scientists to support the Hungarian uprising. (Larvor, 1998).
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In 1957 he secured a Rockefeller Scholarship to King's College, Cambridge where (supervised by R. B. Braithwaite) he wrote a PhD thesis, a later version of which was eventually published as Proofs and Refutations (Larvor, 1998).
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He was appointed to a position in the London School of Economics, where he wrote on the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of science. The LSE philosophy of science department at that time included Karl Popper and John Watkins. Lakatos Philosophy can be found in this video
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With co-editor Alan Musgrave, Lakatos edited the highly cited Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, and the Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science. The Colloquium was later published in 1970 and was written in response to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Imre Lakatos - New World Encyclopedia, n.d.).
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He saw a threat to academic autonomy in the student unrest of 1968 and rallied to its defense (Larvor, 1998). He issued a letter to the Director of the London School Economics that stated ideological interference leads to bad science.
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In 1969 he was appointed the Professor of Logic. During this time, his philosophical interests broadened to include physical science, and he developed his 'methodology of scientific research programs.' (Larvor, 1998).
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He worked his career at the University of Cambridge and was and advocate for criticism throughout all fields. He was a paradoxical thing, a passionate rationalist. Lakatos died on 2 February 1974, aged 51 (Larvor, 1998).
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Larvor, Brendan. Lakatos : An Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=166905.
Richmond, S. (2015). Why Popper Matters (Popper and His Popular Critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos by Joseph Agassi). Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 2(2), 171–174. https://doi.org/10.18523/kmhj51046.2015-2.171-174 -
Imre Lakatos - New World Encyclopedia. (n.d.). https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Imre_Lakatos#References
