The focus of my research activity lies in the philosophy of science, but with important forays into the history of science, political philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology. While I work in the analytical tradition, broadly conceived, and I favour writing in that style, my remit is large 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 major book collecting twenty-five years of research just appeared with The University of Chicago Press. I am now working on several papers on a range of historical and philosophical issues emerging from this book, as well as another - much shorter - book for a wider audience on the emergence of a modeling attitude in 19th century science.
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 a long-awaited book.
I continue to collaborate with researchers elsewhere, such as at the Institute Vienna Circle, the ERC funded project in Vienna headed by Tarja Knuuttila, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at Cambridge University, and the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at UCL. In Madrid I am now part of an interdisciplinary scientific team working on modelling and simulation of complex systems.