Research

Research Profile

The main focus of my research activity lies in the philosophy of science, but with important forays into metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, the history of science, and aesthetics. While I work in the analytical tradition, and I favour writing in that style, my remit is broad and reflects my fairly wide interests. I see particular philosophical virtue in revealing unsuspected connections, and I work towards productive cooperation between different areas and disciplines. 

My overall approach to most issues is pragmatist, and some of my views can be traced back to the founders of pragmatism, notably Charles Peirce and John Dewey. My work is also informed by peers in the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP), and the integrated History and Philosophy of Science (iHPS) movement.

Until quite recently, most of my research could be cleanly divided into two different areas: philosophy of probability, and scientific representation. As regards the former, I am known for reintroducing propensity notions into the philosophy of physics, developing a 'tripartite conception' of objective probability, and arguing for the ensuing 'complex nexus' view of chance. For years now I have been engaged in a project to apply the complex nexus, in order to understand the nature of stochasticity, to a range of disciplines including observational astrophysics, evolutionary biology, population ecology, and chemistry.

As for scientific representation, I originated the so-called 'inferential conception' and I am known for applying it to a variety of modelling techniques and practices. I pioneered the nowadays burgeoning study of fictions in science (I organized the first conference on the topic in 2006, and edited the ensuing volume). I was also amongst the earliest advocates of the relevance of the philosophy of art in these debates. A book collecting over twenty years of research just appeared with The University of Chicago Press. I am now working on a number of papers and two new books aiming to integrate my various interests in a pragmatist history and philosophy of representational practices. 

Link to Repositories and Profiles

• Academia

• Bluesky

• Clare Hall Cambridge

• Google Scholar

• London School of Economics

• Orcid

• PhilPeople

• Pittsburgh Archive

• Research Gate

• Twitter

• Web of Science

• Wikipedia

Research Teams

For nearly 16 years, with scarce moral or institutional support, I headed Methods of Scientific Representation, a pioneering research group in Spain, based at Complutense University of Madrid but sprawling through a network of Universities in Spain and abroad. I put an end to it in 2020 in order to focus on my own personal projects, including the completion of some long-awaited books.

I continue to collaborate with groups elsewhere, such as at the Institute Vienna Circle, the ERC funded project in Vienna headed by Tarja Knuuttila, and the good people at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at Cambridge University. In Madrid I am now part of an interdisciplinary scientific team working on modelling and simulation of complex systems.