Two books have been particularly influential in contemporary philosophy of science: Karl R. Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Both agree upon the importance of revolutions in science, but differ about the role of criticism in science's revolutionary growth. This volume arose out of a symposium on Kuhn's work, with Popper in the chair, at an international colloquium held in London in 1965. The book begins with Kuhn's statement of his position followed by (...) seven essays offering criticism and analysis, and finally by Kuhn's reply. The book will interest senior undergraduates and graduate students of the philosophy and history of science, as well as professional philosophers, philosophically inclined scientists, and some psychologists and sociologists. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos; II—Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Page.

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.

Imre Lakatos; II—Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Page.

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume II presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues. Imre Lakatos had (...) an influence out of all proportion to the length of his philosophical career. This collection exhibits and confirms the originality, range and the essential unity of his work. It demonstrates too the force and spirit he brought to every issue with which he engaged, from his most abstract mathematical work to his passionate 'Letter to the director of the LSE'. Lakatos' ideas are now the focus of widespread and increasing interest, and these volumes should make possible for the first time their study as a whole and their proper assessment. (shrink)

The article traces the development of Hungarian intellectual history of the early modern period from the emergence of the national romantic constructions of literary history to the recent turn towards contextualist and conceptual history. One of its main findings is the ideological importance of this period for the formation of the national canon, as it became a central point of reference for the emerging local methodological tradition of intellectual history, even if it was often compartamentalized under other categories. From this (...) perspective, the article puts particular emphasis on ideological constructions seeking to define the nation and depict the emergence of modern national identity. This finding also offers a vantage point for analyzing the interplay between literary history and the socio-culturally focused approaches, which can be considered the main framework for the developments of the last two decades, when these local historiographical traditions entered into an interesting dialogue with the Western European and American schools of intellectual history. Along these lines, while pointing out the discursive continuities with the previous paradigms, which are shaping even the contemporary historiographical production, the article also ponders the ways in which the inherited (post-)romantic constructions can be successfully challenged. (shrink)

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture (...) of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations. (shrink)

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion (which mirrors certain real developments in the history of mathematics) raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. (...) class='Hi'>Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations. (shrink)

The volume offers the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. Covering twenty national cultures and languages wedged between Russia, Turkey, Austria and Germany, it goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narrative and offers a novel vision of transnational intellectual history. The authors focus on the ways political thinkers outside of Western Europe sought to bridge the gap between an idealized Western modernity and their own societies. Mapping these discourses and debates from the Enlightenment (...) to the First World War, the volume helps rethinking some of our basic assumptions about the history of modern European culture and politics. (shrink)

The volume, stemming from the long-term cooperation of scholars working on East Central European intellectual history, discusses the patterns of patriotic and national identification in the light of the multiplicity of levels of ethnic, cultural and political allegiances characterizing this region in the early modern period.

Institutions are a kind of social infrastructure that facilitates – or hinders – human co-ordination and allocation of resources. Thus they function as a rationality context, which simultaneously emerges from and governs human interactions. Business institutions, as they are related to human expectations, should promote the values of their stakeholders and, consequently, they are subjects of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting procedures. Ethical institutions make the good of their stakeholder groups part of the institution’s own good. They have (...) a clear vision and picture of integrity throughout the institution which is owned and embodied by top management, over time. Such a practice presumes that business institutions, e.g. corporations, are social cultures with character, which can exercise good or bad influence, depending on goals, policies structures, strategies that formalize relations among the individuals who build up corporations. For developing an ethical culture, corporations need a large scale of instruments as codes of ethics and other kinds of support structures throughout the organization to insure their adequate communication, oversight, enforcement, adjudication, and review. Between all these instruments, a special role could be played by the ethics officer and the ethics committee, ethics trainings, ethics audits but also by the implementation of responsibility and participatory decision making at lower levels in the organisation. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.

The work that helped to determine Paul Feyerabend's fame and notoriety, Against Method,stemmed from Imre Lakatos's challenge: "In 1970 Imre cornered me at a party. 'Paul,' he said, 'you have such strange ideas.

v. 1. The methodology of scientific research programmes.--v. 2. Mathematics, science, and epistemology.

This text, excerpted from a “diary novel” by Imre Kertész, appeared in both Hungarian and German in 2014. Now suffering with an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, the author considers it the last work that he will be able to complete.

A system of tensed intensional logic excluding iterations of intensions is introduced. Instead of using the type symbols (for ‘sense’), extensional and intensional functor types are distinguished. A peculiarity of the semantics is the general acceptance of value-gaps (including truth-value-gaps): the possible semantic values (extensions) of extensional functors are partial functions. Some advantages of the system (relatively to R. Montague's intensional logic) are briefly indicated. Also, applications for modelling natural languages are illustrated by examples.