The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a

monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...

, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previous six years. The award is in memory of the influential Hungarian philosopher of science and mathematics

Imre Lakatos Imre Lakatos (, ; hu, Lakatos Imre ; 9 November 1922 – 2 February 1974) 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 pr ...

, whose tenure as Professor of Logic at the

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

was cut short by his early and unexpected death. While administered by an international management committee organised from the LSE, it is independent of the LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, with many of the committee's members being academics from other institutions. The value of the award, which has been endowed by the

Latsis Foundation The Latsis Foundation (French: ''Fondation Latsis internationale'') is a charitable foundation, founded in 1975 by the Greek shipping magnate John Latsis. Amongst other prizes and symposia, it funds the University Latsis Prizes (awarded by the U ...

, is £10,000, and to take it up a successful candidate must visit the LSE and deliver a public lecture.

Selection

The award is administered by the following committee: *Professor

Roman Frigg Roman Frigg (born 1972) is a Swiss philosopher, Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science and director of its Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science. In 2016 he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research A ...

(Convenor, LSE) *Professor Richard Bradley (LSE) *Professor

Hasok Chang Hasok Chang (; born March 26, 1967) is a Korean-born American historian and philosopher of science currently serving as the Hans Rausing Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a boar ...

(

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

) *Professor

Nancy Cartwright Nancy Cartwright (born October 25, 1957) is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series ''The Simpsons'', for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Perform ...

(

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

) *Professor Kostas Gavroglu (

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; el, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, ''Ethnikó ke Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the Univers ...

) *Professor

Helen Longino Helen Elizabeth Longino (born July 13, 1944) is an American philosopher of science who has argued for the significance of values and social interactions to scientific inquiry. She has written about the role of women in science and is a central ...

(

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

) *Professor

Samir Okasha Samir Okasha , is a Professor of Philosophy of Science at University of Bristol. He is a winner of Lakatos Award for his book '' Evolution and the Levels of Selection''. He was appointed a Fellow of the British Academy The British Academy is ...

(

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

) *Professor Sabina Leonelli (

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a public university , public research university in Exeter, Devon, England, United Kingdom. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of Min ...

) The Committee makes the Award on the advice of an independent and anonymous panel of selectors.

Winners

The Award has so far been won by: :1986 –

Bas Van Fraassen Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen (; born 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, epistemology and formal logic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University an ...

for ''The Scientific Image'' (1980) and

Hartry Field Hartry H. Field (born November 30, 1946) is an American philosopher. He is Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University; he is a notable contributor to philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and philosophy of min ...

for ''Science Without Numbers'' (1980) :1987 – Michael Friedman for ''Foundations of Space-Time Theories'' and

Philip Kitcher Philip Stuart Kitcher (born 20 February 1947) is a British philosopher who is John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathema ...

for ''Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature'' :1988 –

Michael Redhead Michael Logan Gonne Redhead (30 December 1929 – 31 August 2020) was a British academic and philosopher of physics. Biography Redhead was born on 30 December 1929 in London and educated there at Westminster School. Redhead was Centennial ...

for ''Incompleteness, Nonlocality and Realism'' :1989 –

John Earman John Earman (born 1942) is an American philosopher of physics. He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rocke ...

for ''A Primer on Determinism'' :1991 –

Elliott Sober Elliott R. Sober (born 6 June 1948) 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 phil ...

for ''Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Interference'' (1988) :1993 –

Peter Achinstein Peter Achinstein (born June 30, 1935) is an American philosopher of science at Johns Hopkins University. Biography Achinstein is the son of Betty (née Comras) and economist Asher Achinstein. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard with ...

for ''Particles and Waves: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Science'' (1991) and Alexander Rosenberg for ''Economics—Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns?'' (1992) :1994 –

Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He wa ...

for ''Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics'' (1991) :1995 –

Lawrence Sklar Lawrence Sklar (born June 25, 1938) is an American philosopher. He is the Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Education and career Sklar was born in Baltimore, Maryl ...

for ''Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics'' (1993) :1996 –

Abner Shimony Abner Eliezer Shimony (; March 10, 1928 – August 8, 2015) was an American physicist and philosopher. He specialized in quantum theory and philosophy of science. As a physicist, he concentrated on the interaction between relativity theory and qu ...

for ''The Search for a Naturalistic World View'' (1993) :1998 –

Jeffrey Bub Jeffrey Bub (born 1942) is a physicist and philosopher of physics, and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology a ...

for ''Interpreting the Quantum World'' and

Deborah Mayo Deborah G. Mayo is an American philosopher of science and author. She is a professor emerita in the Department of Philosophy at Virginia Tech and holds a visiting appointment at the Center for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the L ...

for ''Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge'' :1999 –

Brian Skyrms Brian Skyrms (born 1938) is an American philosopher, 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 problem ...

for ''Evolution of the Social Contract'' (1996) on modelling 'fair', non self-interested human actions using (cultural) evolutionary dynamics :2001 –

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on beli ...

for ''Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference'' (2000) on causal models and causal reasoning :2002 –

Penelope Maddy Penelope Maddy (born 4 July 1950) is an American philosopher. Maddy is Emerita 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 i ...

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

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...

s of

set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...

are justified :2003 –

Patrick Suppes Patrick Colonel Suppes (; March 17, 1922 – November 17, 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology ...

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

atising a wide range of

scientific theories A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluatio ...

in terms of

:2004 –

Kim Sterelny Kim Sterelny (born 1950) 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 ...

for ''Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition'' (2003) on the idea that thought is a response to threat :2005 – James Woodward for ''Making Things Happen'' (2003) on

causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...

and

explanation An explanation is a set of Statement (logic), statements usually constructed to description, describe a set of facts which clarifies the causality, causes, wiktionary:context, context, and Logical consequence, consequences of those facts. It may ...

:2006 – Harvey Brown for ''Physical Relativity: Space-time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective'' (2005) and

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 –

for '' Evolution and the Levels of Selection'' (2006). :2010 –

Peter Godfrey-Smith Peter Godfrey-Smith (born 1965) is an Australian philosopher of science and writer, who is currently Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He works primarily in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind, ...

for ''Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection'' :2012 –

Wolfgang Spohn Wolfgang Konrad Spohn (born 20 March 1950, in Tübingen) is a German philosopher. He is professor of philosophy and philosophy of science at the University of Konstanz. Biography Wolfgang Spohn studied philosophy, logic and philosophy of scie ...

for ''The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory and its Philosophical Implications'' (2012) :2013 – Laura Ruetsche for ''Interpreting Quantum Theories'' (2011) and David Wallace for ''The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation'' (2012) :2014 – Gordon Belot for ''Geometric Possibility'' (2011) and

David Malament David B. Malament (born 21 December 1947) is an American philosopher of science, specializing in the philosophy of physics. Biography Malament attended Stuyvesant High School and received a B.A. in mathematics 1968 at Columbia College, Colum ...

for ''Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory'' (2012) :2015 – Thomas Pradeu for ''The Limits of the Self: Immunology and Biological Identity'' (2012) :2016 – Brian Epstein for ''The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences'' (2015) :2017 –

Craig Callender Craig Callender (born 1968) is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. His main areas of research are philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and metaphysics. Education and career Callender obtained his PhD in ...

for ''What Makes Time Special?'' :2018 – Sabina Leonelli for ''Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study'' (2016) :2019 – Henk W. de Regt for ''Understanding Scientific Understanding'' (2017) :2020 – Nicholas Shea for ''Representation in Cognitive Science'' (2018) :2021 – Anya Plutynski for ''Explaining Cancer: Finding Order in Disorder'' (2018) :2022 – Catarina Dutilh Novaes for ''The Dialogical Roots of Deduction: Historical, Cognitive, and Philosophical Perspectives on Reasoning'' (2020)

References

External links

The Lakatos Award website at the LSE
{{Philosophy awards Philosophy awards Non-fiction literary awards Philosophy of science *