Brenden Larvor's Lakatos: An Introduction

My first point: it was 20% off.

My second point: even at full price it's pretty cheap.

But the important point is that this is a pretty darn good introduction to the work of Imre Lakatos, notable---though not always noted--philosopher of science and mathematics.

It's very easy to get bits and pieces of Lakatos, if you skim around the philosophy of science literature. But it's really rather difficult to get an overall sense of where he and his thought fit in. Which is a shame, because he is a very important thinker, both for his own ideas and for his place in the grand dialectic starting with Karl Popper and ending in Paul Feyerabend (with Thomas Khun in the middle). No surprise, then, that Larvor spends much of this book carefully situates Lakatos among these thinkers.

But he also spends a good deal of effort in placing Lakatos work against Lakatos personal and historical circumstances. The way that Marxist thought and Hungarian Marxist practice influenced Lakatos' writings is particularly interesting.

Lakatos is one of those writers that one likes to call "subtle"---which means, for me, roughly: The first thing you read by him strikes you as utter, hamfisted garbage; the next thing reminds you of the first; the third kills you, because it actually seems interesting; the fourth drives you despair either because you can't see how to straightforwardly kill the idiocy, or you can't bear what a moron you were to have thought this stuff hamfisted, or you can't figure out how to explain the brilliance.

Lakatos is a subtle writer.

One of the most interesting things about Lakatos is that he's the only one of the four who did much in the philosophy of mathematics, which, if you think about it, is rather odd. But he did, and his Proofs and Refutations is commonly lauded, though, again, little read (as far as I can tell). What makes Lakatos most interesting for the philosopher of mathematics is the way he brought his historical method over from the philosophy of science, and, for that matter, from his philosophy of philosophy.

For the casual, solitary reader, I can certainly recommend this book as an introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as to Lakatos. It should provide a reasonable---though provisional---introduction to the field.

It's important to take it as provisional, as is the case with all introductions, though, alas, I find most people take their introductions as gospel instead. Worse, I find that casual throwaway remarks weigh most heavily on the newly initiated soul. For example, on page 23:

Platonic dialogues are typically dominated by Socrates, who talks more than anyone else and directs the conversation toward the truth as he sees it by a combination of logical analysis, tendentious description and verbal bullying.

This passage itself involves rather a lot of tendentious description and verbal bullying! Worse, it makes it too easy for the casual reader to come to a completely unwarrented view of Plato and Socrates that is very hard to shake. (For example, there are many different kinds of Platonic dialogue, and they have very different "feels" and structures, whereas the misguided soul fresh from Larvor will find it easy to lump them all under that pernicious description.) Aside from the injustice done to Plato, this is a disservice to the reader, who might thereby be led to avoid Plato, or merely to feel contempt for him.

Happily, such lines are (as far as I can tell from my privileged, educated position) few, and I think, on the whole, eminently resistable.

Lakatos' personal and intellecutal stories are dramatic and exciting, and their intertwining paths facinate. Larvor presents them in a straightforward and comprehensible way. A good solid read for the beach.