Lakatos Award Lecture
The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science. Each Lakatos award winner delivers a Lakatos Award Lecture to present their work and receive their award.
The Lakatos Award was made possible by a generous endowment from the Latsis Foundation, in memory of the former LSE professor Imre Lakatos. It is administered by an international Management Committee, which is organised from the LSE but entirely independent of LSE’s Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. The Committee decides the outcome of the Award competition on the basis of advice from an anonymous panel of selectors who produce detailed reports on the shortlisted books.
Watch the 2024 Lakatos Award Lecture
You can find all the information about the winner, their award-winning books, and links to their Lakatos Award Lecture video below.
Lakatos Award Winners
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Lakatos Award, which goes to Michela Massimi for her book ‘Perspectival Realism’ (Oxford University Press, 2022).
About the book
Perspectival Realism is praised by the selectors of the Lakatos Award as “a tour de force” that “presents a new philosophical framework for understanding how we come to know about particular phenomena”. It offers “unquestionably the best articulation of perspectival realism”, and in presenting her position Massimi “provides a much-needed philosophical articulation of the theory and also responses to the many objections it faces”.
She sets “an agenda for new programs of research in the philosophy of science”, which “represents a significant reorientation of our thinking on a number of fronts, epistemic and ontological, opening new possibilities for inquiry going forward”. Her book is praised as “stuffed with erudition: great knowledge, wonderful examples, and a deep understanding of how science works”.
About Michela Massimi
Michela Massimi is Professor of Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics.
Michela works in the area of history and philosophy of science with a focus on the physical sciences. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Astronomical Society, corresponding Member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and elected Member of the Academia Europaea.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2022 Lakatos Award, which goes to Catarina Dutilh Novaes for her book The Dialogical Roots of Deduction (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
About the Book
The Dialogical Roots of Deduction is praised by the Selectors as a “masterwork” that is “absolutely fascinating” and in which “we have a breath-taking amount of knowledge revealed”: “the knowledge is breath-taking, the argument original, and the whole is an intellectual feat”. The book “develops a coherent, compelling and broadly articulated account of large parts of human reasoning that has wide relevance to understanding science as a particular development of
human reason.”
The book offers a “very intriguing, erudite, and potentially highly productive argument, namely that deduction is fundamentally a dialogical and collaborative phenomenon, and hence is not the outcome of individual activities based on rules or logic with reasoners in competition with each other, but instead should be viewed as a social activity.” In making this point, “the book clearly makes a very important contribution to our understandings of logic and mathematical reasoning”.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Lakatos Award, which goes to Anya Plutynski for her book Explaining Cancer (Oxford University Press, 2018).
About the Book
Explaining Cancer is praised by the Selectors as a “remarkable book” that is “clear and carefully argued” and that “covers an impressive amount of ground impressively well” while being “an outstanding example of how to do relevant philosophy of science”. It is reported to offer a “densely-argued, wide-ranging and penetrating analysis of the science of cancer research.
Anyone interested in the subject would learn much from reading it, and find many surprises, both from the point of view of the science and philosophy”. Plutynski is praised for displaying “an enviable command of the philosophical literature. She is also highly informative about cancer. The combination gives an unusual depth and sensitivity to the philosophical points that she makes.”
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Lakatos Award, which goes to Nicholas Shea for his book Representation in Cognitive Science (Oxford University Press, 2018).
About the Book
Representation in Cognitive Science is praised by selectors as “a blockbuster of a book” and “a landmark study”. Its argument is acclaimed to be “original in interesting ways, without losing touch with the existing literature” and the book is reported to be “well-written and convincingly argued”. This is all the more important given that “the problem is a really difficult one, that is arguably the key problem in the philosophy of psychology and cognitive science” and “making a novel contribution in this area, as Shea has done, is no small feat: it requires mastery of a massive and complex philosophical literature, and a deep familiarity with cognitive science, both of which Shea has”.
The book is praised for how it “integrates the abstract philosophical arguments with examples and case studies from cognitive science”. For these reasons “the book certainly constitutes a major advance on the problem of naturalizing representational content and is a welcome contribution to the teleosemantic tradition”.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Lakatos Award, which goes to Henk W. de Regt for his book Understanding Scientific Understanding (Oxford University Press, 2017).
About the Book
Understanding Scientific Understanding is praised by the Selectors as “a remarkable book”. It is “a long anticipated book that does important work reframing our own philosophical aims and norms of intelligibility”. De Regt’s work is “is a magnificent example of how history and philosophy of science can be productively integrated”, making its point through historical case studies that are “scholarly and insightful”. The book is “a serious, carefully argued work, on a neglected but important topic in the philosophy of science”.
The 2018 Lakatos Award is to be awarded to Sabina Leonelli for her book Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and to Craig Callender for his book What Makes Time Special? (Oxford University Press, 2017).
About the Books
Leonelli’s book is praised by the Selectors as “a ground-breaking, richly interdisciplinary and scientifically-engaged study that productively reframes philosophical conceptions of data” and as “carefully researched, interesting and genuinely original”. The book breaks new ground because its subject matter “is of enormous topical importance, and yet has been hardly addressed by philosophers of science at all” and it “expands the scope of philosophical inquiry to a number of questions that philosophers have neglected: data acquisition and handling, and the transmission of data through various processes of decontextualizing”. This makes Leonelli “a pioneer in drawing attention to the variety of forms and uses of data, to the importance to scientists of the modes of data production and curation.”
Callender’s book is rated as an “ambitious and highly original contribution to the philosophy of time”, which “displays nothing short of profound insight into the way physics informs old debates about time”. It is “an important, powerful and original book. It displays an impressive mastery of the relevant physics and puts it to excellent use”. The book is a “densely-argued, fascinating treatment of the problem of time, that breaks new ground” and “will be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the topic [of time], not just philosophers of physics”. It “deserves special recognition for the way in which it integrates physics, metaphysics, and psychology” and for recruiting “an enormously wide range of interdisciplinary resources to make a case”.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2016 Lakatos Award, which goes to Brian Epstein of Tufts University for The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences (Oxford University Press, 2015). He will win a prize of £10,000.
About the Book
Professor Epstein’s book is rated as “an extremely serious and significant book, as good a treatment of the metaphysics of the social world as there is, by some way.” It provides “an outstandingly elegant illustration of why metaphysical foundations really matter to the practice of science,” and “opens the door to a more productive philosophy of social science than has hitherto been available.” The arguments are “careful and rigorous,” with “the right mixture of theories and examples,” arriving at “quite original conclusions.” The book is praised as “beautiful and engaging”, “original and ambitious”, “exemplary in its clarity”, and “extremely enjoyable to read.”
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2015 Lakatos Award, which goes to Thomas Pradeu of CNRS and the University of Bordeaux for his book The Limits of the Self: Immunology and Biological Identity (Oxford University Press, 2012). He will win a prize of £10,000.
About the Book
Dr. Pradeu’s book is praised by the Selectors as “a profound examination of the ways in which our current understanding of the immune system can shed light on the metaphysical questions of identity and selfhood.” It is notable in its “impressive grasp of a wide range of literature both on the history and the current theory of immunology,” engaging with “real cutting edge science” and demonstrating “a detailed understanding of the relevant science and scientific practices.” Its “accessible and original” discussion makes a “distinctive and important contribution to the expansion of the scope of philosophy of biology,” and should be “of considerable interest well beyond the philosophy of the biomedical sciences.”
The London School of Economics and Political Science is pleased to announce that the 2014 Lakatos Award for outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, has been won jointly by Gordon Belot and David Malament. Each will win a prize of £7500.
Gordon Belot is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan. He wins the award for his book Geometric Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2011).
David Malament is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. He wins the award for his book Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory (Chicago, 2012).
The London School of Economics and Political Science is pleased to announce that the 2013 Lakatos Award for outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, has been won jointly by Laura Ruetsche and David Wallace. Each will win a prize of £7500.
Laura Ruetsche’s research focuses on the foundations of physical theories, particularly quantum theories. She is also interested in the question of what gender (and similar sorts of social locatedness) might have to do with the epistemic dimension of scientific inquiry. She wins the award for her book, Interpreting Quantum Theories (Oxford University Press, 2011).
David Wallace’s interests are mostly in the philosophy of physics, where he has been particularly active in trying to develop and defend the Everett interpretation of quantum theory. He wins the award for his book, The Emergent Multiverse (Oxford University Press, 2012).
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2012 Lakatos Award, which goes to Wolfgang Spohn (University of Konstanz), for his book The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory and its Philosophical Implications (Oxford University Press, 2012).
About the Book
Wolfgang Spohn presents the first full account of the dynamic laws of belief, by means of ranking theory. This book is his long-awaited presentation of ranking theory and its ramifications. He motivates and introduces the basic notion of a ranking function, which recognises degrees of belief and at the same time accounts for belief simpliciter. He provides a measurement theory for ranking functions, accounts for auto-epistemology in ranking-theoretic terms, and explicates the basic notion of a (deductive or non-deductive) reason.
The rich philosophical applications of Spohn’s theory include: a new account of lawlikeness, an account of ceteris paribus laws, a new perspective on dispositions, a rich and detailed theory of deterministic causation, an understanding of natural modalities as an objectification of epistemic modalities, an account of the experiential basis of belief–and thus a restructuring of the debate on foundationalism and coherentism (and externalism and contextualism)–and, finally, a revival of fundamental a priori principles of reason fathoming the basics of empiricism and the relation between reason and truth, and concluding in a proof of a weak principle of causality. All this is accompanied by thorough comparative discussions, on a general level as well as within each topic, and in particular with respect to probability theory.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 9 May 2013, 6:00pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, London School of Economics
Event name: Truth and Rationality
Themes: How is truth best characterised? And what are the relationships between truth and what it is rational to believe? How should rational belief change in the light of accumulating evidence?
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2010 Lakatos Award, which goes to Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard University), for his book Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford University Press, 2009).
About the Book
The book develops a new analysis and extension of Darwin’s idea of natural selection – one that draws on new developments in philosophy of science, biology and other fields. The central concept involved is that of a “Darwinian population,” a collection of things with the capacity to undergo change by natural selection. From this starting point, new analyses of the role of genes in evolution, the application of Darwinian ideas to cultural change, and “evolutionary transitions” that produce complex organisms and societies are developed.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 2 June 2011, 6.00pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: The Evolution of the Individual
Abstract: Evolution produces not only new species of plants and animals, but also new forms of biological organisation. The cell and the multicellular organism are two examples. These are different kinds of biological individuals. Some writers have seen a progressive tendency here; they think that evolution produces things with more “individuality” as time passes. In this lecture, Peter Godfrey-Smith will propose a new way to think about individuality in the history of life, focusing especially on the relationships between metabolic units and evolutionary units.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Lakatos Award, which goes to Samir Okasha (Bristol University), for his book Evolution and the Levels of Selection (Oxford University Press, 2006).
About the Book
Does natural selection act primarily on genes, on individual organisms or on whole species of organisms? Samir Okasha provides a comprehensive analysis, and proposed resolution, of this longstanding debate. The framework developed sheds new light both on issues within biology (particular attention is paid to the recent literature on ‘major evolutionary transitions’ and multi-level selection theories) and within the foundations or philosophy of biology (for example reductionism and holism, and realism and pluralism).
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 11 May 2010, 6.30pm
Venue: Wolfson Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: Individuals versus Groups in Evolutionary Biology
Abstract: In many animal species, individual organisms live in groups and interact with other group members. Often these interactions are co-operative, and indeed in some cases the groups are so cohesive and well-integrated that it is tempting to regard them as ‘organisms’ in their own right, e.g. certain insect colonies. However, the potential conflict between individual self-interest and group welfare is ever-present, threatening to undermine group cohesion and produce a Hobbes ‘war of all against at all’.
This generic problem, and its possible resolutions, lie at the heart of modern social evolution theory. While highly successful in its own terms, this body of theory rests on certain implicit philosophical assumptions which it is important to scrutinize. My talk offers an integrative survey and philosophical analysis of the ways in which evolutionary biologists have theorized about the relation between individual and group.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2008 Lakatos Award, which goes to Richard Healey (University of Arizona), for his book Gauging What’s Real: the conceptual foundations of contemporary gauge theories (Oxford University Press, 2007).
About the Book
Gauge theories have provided our most successful representations of the fundamental forces of Nature. How though do such representations work to tell us what kind of world our gauge theories reveal to us? Professor Healey’s book describes the representations provided by gauge theories in both classical and quantum physics. He argues that evidence for classical gauge theories of forces (other than gravity) gives us reason to believe that loops rather than points are the locations of fundamental properties. As well as exploring the prospects of extending this conclusion to the quantum gauge theories of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, the book assesses the difficulties faced by attempts to base such ontological conclusions on the success of these theories.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 14 May 2009, 6:00pm
Venue: Old Lecture Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: A World without Particles or Forces
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2006 Lakatos Award, which goes to Harvey Brown (University of Oxford) and Hasok Chang (University College London). They will receive an award of £10,000 for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science.
About the Books
Harvey Brown – Physical Relativity: Space-time Structure from a Dynamical Perspective
Brown’s book develops a critical account of the way that Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, concentrating on a tension between its kinematical and dynamical aspects. It sheds new light on central issues such as the alleged conventionality of simultaneity and the relationships between the special and the general theory of relativity.
Hasok Chang – Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress
Chang’s book attacks the seemingly simple question ‘What is temperature and how can we measure it?’ He shows, however, that pursuing that question leads to new perspectives on a range of general issues about scientific reasoning and the authority of science.
Lakatos Award Lectures
Date and Time: 18 April 2007, 5:00pm
Venue and Title: Hong Kong Theatre, London School of Economics, Harvey Brown - A Hundred years of Relativity: what remains controversial for the philosopher?
Venue and Title: LSE, Hasok Chang- Inventing Temperature
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2005 Lakatos Award, which goes to James Woodward (California Institute of Technology), for his book Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation (Oxford University Press, 2003).
About the Book
Woodward’s long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 4 May 2006, 5.30pm
Venue: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: Sensitive and Insensitive Causation
Abstract: The issue of obtaining evidence for causal relationships between particular variables X and Y is a vital one, both for ordinary life and for the social and biological sciences. Does the MMR vaccine cause increased rates of autism or is it merely ‘accidentally’ associated with it? Is poverty a cause of crime or only associated with it? This lecture argues that the sensitivity of a causal relationship is an important key to understanding here.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2004 Lakatos Award, which goes to Kim Sterelny (Victoria University in Wellington), for his book Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition (Blackwell, 2003).
About the Book
The central idea of the book is that thought is a response to threat. Competitors and enemies make life hard by their direct physical effects. But they also make life hard by eroding epistemic conditions. They lie. They hide themselves. They seem other than what they are.
Sterelny uses this and related ideas to explore from an evolutionary perspective the relationship between folk psychology and an integrated scientific conception of human cognition. In the process, he examines how and why human minds have evolved. The book argues that humans are cognitively, socially, and sexually very unlike the other great apes, and that despite our relatively recent separation from their lineages, human social and cognitive evolution has been driven by unusual evolutionary mechanisms. In developing his own picture of the descent of the human mind, Sterelny further offers a critique of nativist, modular versions of evolutionary psychology. This volume will be of vital interest to scholars and students interested in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and evolutionary psychology.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 28 April 2005, 5.30pm
Venue: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: The Peculiar Primate
Abstract: Though by biologists’ standards, humans have only recently diverged from the chimp species, we are very different from them socially, cognitive and sexually. By chimp standards we are talkative, technological, immensely co-operative, only moderately murderous and even relatively chaste. How did we become such exceptionally strange primates? In this talk I develop a view of both the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for our unusual ways: we are group selected, niche altering and adapted to environmental variability rather than to a specific environment. And I also develop a view of the information-processing systems that have made it possible for us to be intelligent as well as co-operative: a view that concedes something to contemporary evolutionary psychology but which places greater weight both on cognitive technology and on the social accumulation of information.
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2003 Lakatos Award, which goes to Patrick Suppes (Stanford University), for his book Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures (CSLI Publications, 2002).
About the Book
A fundamental reason for using formal methods in the philosophy of science is the desirability of having a fixed frame of reference that may be used to organize the variety of doctrines at hand. This book—Patrick Suppes’s major work, and the result of several decades of research—examines how set-theoretical methods provide such a framework, covering issues of axiomatic method, representation, invariance, probability, mechanics, and language, including research on brain-wave representations of words and sentences. This is a groundbreaking, essential text from a distinguished philosopher.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 29 April 2004, 5.30pm
Venue: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: Why are the Concepts of Representation and Invariance Important in Science?
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2002 Lakatos Award, which goes to Penelope Maddy (University of California, Irvine), for her book Naturalism in Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 1997).
About the Book
Naturalism in Mathematics investigates the issue of how the axioms of set theory, the basis of the whole of mathematics, are justified; and in particular how proposed additional axioms for set theory are to be judged.
Lakatos Award Lecture
Date and Time: 8 May 2003, 5.30pm
Venue: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
Event name: Second Philosophy