The London School of Economics and Political Science announces that the 1994 Lakatos Award, of £10,000 for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, goes to:

Dummett

 

Michael Dummett (University of Oxford), for his book Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (Harvard University Press, 1991).

 

No one has figured more prominently in the study of the German philosopher Gottlob Frege than Michael Dummett. His magisterial Frege: Philosophy of Language is a sustained, systematic analysis of Frege’s thought, omitting only the issues in philosophy of mathematics. In this work Dummett discusses, section by section, Frege’s masterpiece The Foundations of Arithmetic and Frege’s treatment of real numbers in the second volume of Basic Laws of Arithmetic, establishing what parts of the philosopher’s views can be salvaged and employed in new theorizing, and what must be abandoned, either as incorrectly argued or as untenable in the light of technical developments.