Research projects and research groups

A DFG research grant, led by Dr Alice Murphy.

Philosophers now widely agree that if we are to understand science, we need to understand its social dimensions. This has given rise to hugely productive studies into the legitimacy of the influence of social values on research, the collective production of scientific knowledge, and the communication of results and methodologies to other scientists and to the public. Discussions on the role of aesthetic values in science have had a resurgence in recent years. Moving beyond the traditional focus of beauty in physics, various aesthetic properties and judgements have been shown to be embedded within many scientific practices, impacting their epistemic goals. Yet these topics have been explored almost entirely independently from the collective aspects of scientific inquiry and knowledge production.

The aim of this project is to develop a novel perspective on aesthetics in science, one which better reflects scientific practice, by centring its social dimensions. In doing so, the project also targets an underlying source of scepticism: the aesthetic is not an anti-social, wholly personal, or subjective sphere; it is intimately connected with the judgements and choices of a scientific community.

Dr Rory Kent joins the Department as a postdoctoral research fellow working on this project in July 2026.

A 2025-2028 Leverhulme Trust grant, led by Prof. Francesco Berto.

'What if?'-counterfactual questions are of momentous importance for scientific explanations (Would we see that particle track if the atom was ionized?), to ascertain responsibilities (Would he have hit the brakes, had he not been distracted?), to choose what to do (Would I get to the other side if I jumped the stream?). We address them by imagining that a hypothetical situation obtains and wondering what would follow.

But how can imagination give us knowledge of reality, if it's free departure from reality? WIKI will apply in the philosophy of imagination tools from formal epistemology, in particular epistemic and probabilistic logic, to address this issue. If we start by taking counterfactual imagination as a kind of simulated belief revision, we can then analyse it using formal theories of belief revision, in qualitative (focusing on full, all-or-nothing belief) and quantitative clothing (focusing on credences/degrees of belief).

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, WIKI will develop a logic and a formal epistemology of imagination as suppositional thinking, apply them to analyse the workings of scientific thought experiments, and provide an account of how we can become better hypothetical reasoners.

Dr Soroush Rafiee Rad and Dr Petronella Randell are postdoctoral research fellows working on this project.

St Andrews has a strong and diverse ancient philosophy community with equal scholarly resources in Classics and Philosophy. It inherits a distinguished tradition, having been the home of the great scholars Lewis Campbell, John Burnet, A. E. Taylor, Ian Kidd, and Sarah Broadie, which it continues to carry forward. Faculty and postgraduates from both Classics and Philosophy collaborate on workshops, research projects, conferences, and continue to meet at our joint Greek Reading Group which has been running for over 20 years.