Visiting Professors

Rani Lill Anjum

The project has recruited two of the world-leading philosophers of science; Professor Stephen Mumford from Nottingham and Professor John Dupré from Exeter. They will be visiting UMB regularly over the next 4 years.

Visiting Professor Stephen Mumford Photo: Candy Lange

Stephen Mumford is Professor of Metaphysics and Head of Humanities at the University of Nottingham and Professor II at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB). He has written the influential books Dispositions (Oxford 1998) and Laws in Nature (Routledge 2004) and is co-author of the forthcoming Getting Causes From Powers (Oxford 2011). His work had played a crucial role in the revival of causal powers as an account of the workings of world. He has written papers and books on a wide variety of other topics, including David Armstrong (Acumen 2007) and Watching Sport: Aesthetics, Ethics and Emotions (Routledge 2011). Mumford's papers discuss the diverse subjects of truthmakers for negative truths, idleness, and the voluntary suspension of play in football. His main work, however, is in the philosophy of science as he writes about some of the main categories used in the sciences: law, cause, power, natural kind and possibility.

Watch Stephen Mumford talk about philosophy of sports.

Visiting Professor John Dupré Photo: Guido Castagnoli

John Dupré, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (EGENIS) at University of Exeter. He has written a number of books that has influenced the debate in contemporary philosophy of biology: The Disorder of Things (Harvard 1993), Human Nature and the Limits of Science (Oxford 2001) and Darwin's Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford 2003) are some of them. He is also co-author of Genomes and What to Make of Them (University of Chicago Press 2008). Dupré's reserach interests are biological classification; adaptationism and optimality; reductionism; indeterministic accounts of causality; evolution and the limitations of evolutionary psychology; and the biological basis of sex and gender.

Watch John Dupré discussing reductionism with Alex Rosenberg on Philosophy TV.

Published: 24.01.11
Updated: 27.11.12
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Del med en venn:

Causation in Science

UMB School of Economics and Business
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB)
Postbox 5003
NO- 1432 Ås
For visitors: Tårnbygningen, Christian Magnus Falsensvei 18, office T353

Contact person: Rani Lill Anjum (rani.anjum@umb.no), Phone: 64 96 57 12