Larry Laudan

Laurens Lynn "Larry" Laudan (October 16, 1941 – August 23, 2022) was an American philosopher of science and epistemologist. He was a prominent critic of positivism, philosophical realism, and relativism, while simultaneously advocating for science as a fundamentally progressive and privileged institution. A key concept in his work is the "research traditions" model, which offered a significant alternative to Imre Lakatos's "research programs" for understanding scientific development. Laudan earned his B.A. in Physics from the University of Kansas and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University. He held academic positions at various institutions, including University College London, the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Even after retirement, he continued to lecture. His later research focused on legal epistemology. Laudan's most influential book, *Progress and Its Problems* (1977), argued that scientific advancement involves not only accumulating evidence but also resolving conceptual anomalies. He is also known for his "pessimistic induction" argument, which challenges the idea that the success of science implies its theories are true descriptions of reality. In *Beyond Positivism and Relativism* (1996), he proposed that the aim of science is to secure theories with high problem-solving effectiveness. Laudan also explored topics such as risk management and terrorism, notably arguing in *The Book of Risks* that the risk of terrorism to the average American is remote.