Our scholarship addresses questions such as
- What methods did physicists use to construct a model of the Higgs boson?
- What are the ethical implications of mathematical models used in economics and health care?
- How far back in the history of science do laws of nature go?
- How do diverse perspectives enhance scientific research and practice?
- How might our philosophical and scientific theories combine to understand brains and cognition?
- What strategies can support more fruitful collaborations between scientists and philosophers?
- What ontological commitments are implied by different choices of logical and mathematical principles?
Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration
From graduate seminars to PhD thesis projects, graduate students in Philosophy have many opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration with scientists, mathematicians, and science studies scholars. Our faculty and students actively engage with research groups, departments, and institutes for many other disciplines, including Biology, Engineering, Mathematics, Theoretical Neuroscience, Physics, Classical Studies, and Psychology.
Faculty in Philosophy of Science and Mathematics at Waterloo
Philosophy is home to seven faculty members who conduct research and supervise graduate students in philosophy of science and mathematics. To find out more about faculty research, follow the links or contact individual faculty members.
Dr. Carla Fehr
Areas: Feminist philosophy of biology; feminist philosophy of science; socially relevant philosophy of science; gender and diversity in STEM; animal studies
“My research explores the social nature of science and technology. I investigate how a group’s culture—its values, practices, and structures—influences the knowledge it produces. I want to know how scientific values such as objectivity and creativity, and ethical values such as justice, equity, and respect support and reinforce each other to help people meet a wide range of practical and epistemic goals. Using an intersectional approach to cases ranging from primatology to AI, I explore how structural injustice, exploitation, and objectification harm scientific and technological research.”
“In philosophy of biology, I have developed critiques of biological accounts of sex differences in human cognition and in the division of labour. Understanding this sex difference research is particularly important because it has frequently been used to justify excluding women from science and technology careers. I am also interested in how love can make science better. For fun, I think about how the relationships between humans and dogs support excellence in canine cognition research.”
Dr. Patricia Marino
Areas: philosophy of economics; philosophy of mathematics; ethics of AI; models; idealization
“My research focuses on the ethics of formalization and quantification, especially in the social sciences. For example, highly idealized models such as agent-based models now used across a wide range of social and political contexts; my work considers the benefits and potential dangers of relying on highly idealized models where reality is messy and complex. In philosophy of economics, I use philosophy of applied mathematics to understand what it means to say that economics is “too formalistic” or “too mathematized.” I also research how we should conceptualize bias and discrimination in the now ubiquitous use of algorithms and AI.”
Dr. Doreen Fraser
Areas: philosophy of quantum theory (especially quantum field theory and particle physics); applicability of mathematics; analogies; realism and anti-realism
“My research begins with specific issues in the foundations of physics and draws out the implications for general epistemological questions about how science works. Particle physics raises many interesting methodological questions about unification, different formulations of quantum field theory used by different communities, and how to interpret a theory that is so far from everyday experience. My current research is focused on (1) how analogies to more familiar domains have been used to construct new models in particle physics and (2) how the infamous problems with measurement in quantum theory take different forms in relativistic quantum field theory and non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The second project has involved collaboration with physicists at the University and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretial Physics, and both philosophical projects have direct implications for contemporary physics research.”
Dr. Katie Plaisance
Areas: philosophy of psychology; philosophy of biology; socially relevant philosophy of science; interdisciplinary collaboration; qualitative methods
“I have several interconnected research programs in philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, and interdisciplinary collaboration. My work aims to improve our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge, foster fruitful interactions between philosophy and science, and help make scientific research and its applications more epistemically and ethically sound.”
“One of my main projects uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study the relationship between philosophy of science and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). My research team and I recently conducted a survey of over 2,000 scientists and engineers across Canada and the U.S. and interviewed several scientists and engineers who have collaborated with philosophers of science. We looked at STEM scholars’ attitudes towards philosophy of science, interest in collaborating with philosophers, the benefits they experience when working with philosophers, and the challenges they face in making these collaborations happen. We were pleased to find that most scientists and engineers held positive views towards philosophy of science as a field and were interested collaborating with philosophers! We are now starting to develop a toolkit to help bring these collaborations to fruition.”
“I have also collaborated with scientists myself. For example, as part of a project on ‘Genetics and Human Agency’, I worked with psychologists to develop a new methodological approach in human behavior genetics, which we then employed to study growth mindset. In short, I believe philosophy of science has a significant role to play in improving and advancing science.”
Dr. Jacqueline Feke
Areas: History and philosophy of ancient Greek physical sciences and mathematics; laws of nature; scientific methodology
“My research examines the history, philosophy, and rhetoric of the ancient Greek sciences, not only as received by ancient philosophers but also as practiced by ancient mathematicians, who appropriated philosophical ideas but also criticized them, in an effort to distinguish their studies from philosophers’ discourses and bolster their own work in the exact sciences. While my publications have focused on the history and philosophy of the ancient physical and mathematical sciences, especially astronomy, most recently I had an article published showing that the concept of laws of nature has its roots in ancient Pythagoreanism. Many of the concepts employed by today’s sciences have their origins in ancient Greek philosophy and, if we want to understand why science today is the way it is, we have to look to its history.”
Dr. Chris Eliasmith
Areas: Cognitive science; theoretical neuroscience; philosophy of psychology; models; empirical methodology
“I work in theoretical neuroscience, a field that is concerned with providing quantitative models of neurobiological systems. My lab is specifically focussed on large-scale brain modeling, which naturally overlaps with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of computation.
“Given my focus, I'm interested in issues in philosophy of several sciences, including cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and biology. My research also uses a lot of mathematical methods, although philosophy of math is not a focus. Key philosophical questions for my work arise around the epistemology of modeling, the nature of mental representations, neural and cognitive semantics, the fundamental nature of cognition.”
“Doing science in a responsible manner is a critical real-world issue that is deeply impacted by the particular concepts and methods we bring to bear. The limitations of empirical methods, conceptual assumptions, and mathematical foundations are excellent fodder for philosophical consideration.”
Dr. David DeVidi
Areas: Philosophy of mathematics; mathematical and logical pluralisms; realism and anti-realism in mathematics and logic
“My research tends to focus on the relationship between formal tools and results in mathematics and logic and their relationship to issues in metaphysics and logic. My main interests in both mathematics and logic are in so-called non-classical systems (intuitionistic systems, other versions of constructivism, paraconsistent systems) and in related issues to do with logical and mathematical pluralism. I find working with graduate students one of the most rewarding parts of my job as a professor, and most of the students I have supervised over the years have worked on theses in these areas.”