Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science · No restrictions

A Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science who argued, against the tidy textbook picture, that mathematical proof develops through a messy process of proposing theorems, finding counterexamples, and revising — a thesis he laid out in Proofs and Refutations. He extended the idea to science itself with his concept of the "research programme," a framework for judging when a scientific theory is still making useful predictions and when it has stopped, which remains a standard reference point in philosophy of science.