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his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume II presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.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)

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his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.

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)

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

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

Isolated habitats can be compared and ranked by comparing their interior-to-edge ratio (I/E). We would like to show here that results based on ranking by I/E ratio sometimes contradict Diamond's rule, which ranks the most rounded habitat (i.e. most compact) as the best one. The reason for this contradiction is the frequently overlooked size dependence of the I/E. Being the interior-to-edge ratio size dependent, from a given set of habitats of different sizes, compact shaped (rounded) habitats might have worse I/E (...) ratios than elongated or irregular ones. (shrink)

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.

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.

Huayan Buddhism is regarded as one of the most philosophical schools of Chinese Buddhism, representing the elite-scholar Buddhism under the Tang Dynasty. Its vision of truth is based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, the scripture that Huayan masters studied, explained, and commented intensively throughout their lives. This was the common vocation of these monks, which gradually created a lineage of the Huayan tradition, a succession of exegetes who believed that the Avatamsaka Sutra was the consummate teaching of Buddha preached directly after (...) his enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Although the base text of Huayan Buddhism was the Avatamsaka Sutra, classified as the round or perfect teaching in the classification of doctrines (panjiao), other teachings, such as Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and Tathāgatagarbha had exerted a great influence on the way Huayan scholars apprehended and interpreted this Mahāyāna scripture. In this article, we are going to discuss how Yogācāra philosophy was evaluated in the context of Huayan Buddhism, how the Huayan masters classified the consciousness-only teachings, and finally how they applied this philosophy in revealing the purport of the inline image, formulating its own distinctive school, the round teaching of one vehicle. (shrink)

In landscape ecology spatial descriptors (or indices) can be used to characterize habitats. Some of these descriptors can be used for habitat's ranking; this ranking is very important for conservation purposes. We would like to show that two traditional descriptors, namely the compactness and interior-to-edge ratio can give contradictory results. Being the second one is a more relevant descriptor, we would like to propose to avoid the further use the compactness in habitat's ranking.

In the mathematical documents which have come down to us from these peoples, there are no theorems or demonstrations, and the fundamental concepts of ...