The Lakatos Award is given annually for a contribution to the philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

 which is widely interpreted as outstanding. The contribution must be in the form of a book published in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 during the previous six years.

The Award is in memory of Imre Lakatos

Imre Lakatos

Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...

 and has been endowed by the Latsis Foundation

Latsis Foundation

The Latsis Foundation is a charitable foundation, founded in 1975 by the Greek shipping magnate John Latsis. Amongst other prizes and symposia, it funds the European Latsis Prize and it has endowed the Lakatos Award. The foundation is based in Geneva....

. It is administered by the following committee:

• The Director of the London School of Economics
  London School of Economics
  The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
  
   (Chairman)
• Professor John Worrall
  John Worrall (philosopher)
  John Worrall is a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics. He is also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the same institution....
  
   (Convenor)
• Professor Hans Albert
  Hans Albert
  Hans Albert is a German philosopher. Born in Cologne, he lives in Heidelberg.His fields of research are Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods. He is a critical rationalist, giving special attention to rational heuristics...
  
  
• Professor Nancy Cartwright
  Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)
  Nancy Cartwright FBA is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and the University of California at San Diego, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship...
  
  
• Professor Adolf Grünbaum
  Adolf Grünbaum
  Adolf Grünbaum is a philosopher of science and a critic of psychoanalysis. He is also well-known as a critic of Karl Popper's philosophy of science....
  
  
• Professor Philip Kitcher
• Professor Alan Musgrave
  Alan Musgrave
  Alan Musgrave is an English born New Zealand philosopher. Musgrave was educated at the London School of Economics with a BA Honours Philosophy and Economics 1961. Sir Karl Popper supervised Musgrave's PhD which was completed in 1969. Musgrave worked as Popper's Research Assistant initially then...
  
  
• Professor Michael Redhead

The Committee makes the Award on the advice of an independent and anonymous panel of selectors. The value of the Award is £10,000.

To take up an Award a successful candidate must visit the LSE

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 and deliver a public lecture

Lecture

thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...

.

Winners

The Award has so far been won by:

1986 - Bas Van Fraassen

for The Scientific Image (1980)

and Hartry Field

Hartry Field

Hartry H. Field is a philosopher, the Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He previously taught at the University of Southern California and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He earned his Ph.D...

for Science Without Numbers (1980)

1987 - Michael Friedman

Michael Friedman (philosopher)

Michael Friedman is a philosopher of science interested in Immanuel Kant and the post-analytic movement in philosophy. Friedman earned his A.B from Queen's College in New York and his PhD from Princeton University. He is Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities at Stanford University...

for Foundations of Space-Time Theories

and Philip Kitcher

for Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature

1988 - Michael Redhead

for Incompleteness, Nonlocality and Realism

1989 - John Earman

John Earman

John Earman is a philosopher of physics. He is currently an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at UCLA, the Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, and was president of the Philosophy of...

for A Primer on Determinism

1991 - Elliott Sober

Elliott Sober

Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sober is noted for his work in philosophy of biology and general philosophy of science. Sober taught for one year at Stanford University and has...

for Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Interference (1988)

1993 - Peter Achinstein

Peter Achinstein

Peter Achinstein is a distinguished American Philosopher of Science. He is the author of numerous influential books and articles. He is the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein University Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University, director of the Yeshiva Center for History and Philosophy of Science,...

for Particles and Waves: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Science (1991)

and Alexander Rosenberg

Alexander Rosenberg

Alexander Rosenberg is an American philosopher, and the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.Rosenberg was educated at Stuyvesant High School, the City College of New York and Johns Hopkins University...

for Economics--Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? (1992)

1994 - Michael Dummett

Michael Dummett

Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett FBA D.Litt is a British philosopher. He was, until 1992, Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford...

for Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (1991)

1995 - Lawrence Sklar

Lawrence Sklar

Lawrence Sklar is an American philosopher. He is the Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished UniversityProfessor at the University of Michigan. He specialises in the Philosophy of Physics, approaching a wide range of issues from a position best described as highly sceptical of many of...

for Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics (1993)

1996 - Abner Shimony

Abner Shimony

Abner Shimony is an American physicist and philosopher of science specializing in quantum theory.-Career:Shimony obtained his BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University in 1948, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1950. He obtained his Ph.D...

for The Search for a Naturalistic World View (1993)

1998 - Jeffrey Bub

Jeffrey Bub

Jeffrey Bub, born 1942, is a physicist and philosopher of science, and Distinguished Professor at the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences, the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, College Park...

for Interpreting the Quantum World

and Deborah Mayo

for Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge

1999 - Brian Skyrms

Brian Skyrms

Brian Skyrms is a Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine and a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He has worked on problems in the philosophy of science, causation, decision theory, game theory, and the...

for Evolution of the Social Contract (1996) on modelling 'fair', non self-interested human actions using (cultural) evolutionary dynamics (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/lakatos/lakatosaward_archive/Lecture1999.htm)

2001 - Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl is a computer scientist and philosopher, best known for developing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks ....

for Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference (2000) on causal models and causal reasoning (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/lakatos/lakatosaward_archive/LakatosAward2001LectureFlyer.htm)

2002 - Penelope Maddy

Penelope Maddy

Penelope Maddy is a UCI Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. She is well known for her influential work in the philosophy of mathematics, where she has worked on realism and naturalism.Maddy received her Ph.D. from...

for Naturalism in Mathematics (1997) on the issue of how the axiom

Axiom

In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...

s of set theory

Set theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...

 are justified (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/lakatos/lakatosaward_archive/LakatosAward2002announcement.htm)

2003 - Patrick Suppes

Patrick Suppes

Patrick Colonel Suppes is an American philosopher who has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology, and educational technology...

for Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures (2002) on axiom

Axiom

In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...

atising a wide range of scientific theories

Scientific theory

A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...

 in terms of set theory

Set theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics...

 (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/lakatos/lakatosaward_archive/LakatosAward2003announcement.htm)

2004 - Kim Sterelny

Kim Sterelny

Kim Sterelny is an Australian philosopher and professor of philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University and Victoria University of Wellington. He is the winner of several international prizes in the philosophy of science, and editor of Biology and Philosophy...

for Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition (2003) on the idea that thought is a response to threat (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/lakatos/LakatosAward2004.htm)

2005 - James Woodward

for Making Things Happen (2003) on causality

Causality

Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....

 and explanation

Explanation

An explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....

2006 - Harvey Brown

Harvey Brown (philosopher)

Harvey R. Brown, is a philosopher of physics. He is professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy....

for Physical Relativity: Space-time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective (2005)

and Hasok Chang

for Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress (2004)

2008 - Richard Healey

for Gauging What’s Real: the conceptual foundations of contemporary gauge theories (2007)

2009 -Samir Okasha

for Evolution and the Levels of Selection (2006).

2010 -Peter Godfrey-Smith

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Born in Australia in 1965, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from UCSD in 1991, and joined Harvard in 2006 after previous positions at Stanford University and Australian National University...

for Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection

External links

• The Lakatos Award website at the LSE