Logic List Mailing Archive

FOM: New Lakatos book (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 12:22:55 EDT
From: KADVANY@aol.com
To: fom@math.psu.edu
Subject: FOM: New Lakatos book

FOM subscribers may be interested in my new book on Imre Lakatos' philosophy 
of mathematics and science: "Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason" (Duke 
University Press 2001, paper; ISBN: 0822326493).  About one-half is on 
Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations, including: 
-- continuation of Lakatos' philosophical history of 19th century mathematics 
through Cantor's improvement of trigonometic series theorems and the origins 
of modern set theory
-- skeptical method in mathematical concept formation and theorem improvement
-- application of Lakatos' ideas to the intensional status of Goedel's second 
incompleteness theorem and its proofs.
The book ends with a long chapter on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Lakatos' 
nefarious Hungarian background, and his intellectual relationship with the 
Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Luk?cs.  The entire book is written as an 
explication of Lakatos' implicit or covert Hegelianism, expressed for example 
through the historiography of Proofs and Refutations.

John Kadvany