Stathis Psillos
Principal Investigator
Prof. Psillos's expertise in the metaphysics of science, especially in the defence of a neo-Humean approach and in criticising the resuscitation of Aristotelian powers, has been widely recognised internationally. Since his award-winning book Causation and Explanation in 2002, he kept working systematically on various areas of the metaphysics of science related to NoMoS.
He has extensively published on various aspects on the issues of laws, causation and powers. Related to the themes of NoMoS, he has published more than 30 articles since 2010. In the last 10 years, he has given more than 40 invited talks on related issues in various conferences, workshops and seminars around the globe. He has developed his own philosophical perspective, titled Scientific realism with a Humean Face, trying to show that scientific realism (a view he developed and defended for decades) can live happily with a sparse metaphysical image of the world. The highly positive reactions he has received for his work on the metaphysics of science (and on scientific realism) are reflected in the high number of citations, invitations and requests to referee relevant research projects. All this has been a huge encouragement for him to work in this area more. Currently, he is fascinated with the prospect of moving his research forward by developing a metaphysics of science which accommodates some notion of natural necessity. For more details, visit his personal website here.
Konstantina Antiochou
Researcher
Konstantina Antiochou is a postdoctoral researcher in the Philosophy and History of Science Department, University of Athens. She holds a first degree in Philosophy from the Department of Philosophy, Education and Psychology, University of Ioannina, followed by a Master’s degree in Philosophy and a PhD both from the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies, University of Crete. Her thesis (2019) is on The Fact-Value Distinction and the Objectivity of Science. She specializes in the Philosophy of Science, focusing especially on the role of values in science and research ethics.
Antonis Antoniou
Researcher
Antonis is primarily interested in philosophical questions in the methodology of physics, especially in the areas of high-energy physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Bristol in 2022, and has published articles on the topics of scientific models, data analysis at the LHC, and the search for dark matter. He has also presented several talks in international conferences, including an early career conference in Philosophy of Particle & High Energy Physics at the University of Pittsburg, and the ASTRO 2022 conference on The present and future of Astronomy, organized by the European Southern Observatory. For more details, you can visit his website here.
His work in NoMos is focused on the difficulties of conceptualizing natural laws that apply to only one object as well as the possibility of perceiving lawlike constraints on initial conditions as fundamental laws, within the context of cosmology.
Stavros Ioannidis
Researcher
Stavros Ioannidis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Natural Sciences at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Bristol (2012). He is the co-author (with Stathis Psillos) of Mechanisms in Science: Method or Metaphysics? (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and the editor (with Gal Vishne, Meir Hemmo and Orly Shenker) of Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy: Re-examining the Multi-level Structure of Reality (2022). He was the principal investigator of the project MECHANISM, funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (2018-21). His research focuses on topics in the philosophy of biology (especially the concept of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, evolutionary and developmental biology) and in the metaphysics of science. For more details, you can visit his website here.
His work in NoMoS will focus on the examination of the main problems of contemporary monistic (law-based and power-based) ontologies and on the identification of historical precursors of the dualist model in the work of Newton and Leibniz.
Maria Panagiotatou
Researcher
Maria holds a Physics degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and an MSc in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from the National Technical University of Athens (funded by an NTUA scholarship). In 2011 she completed her PhD in philosophy of physics with a dissertation titled: “Looking into the possibility of a realist approach of quantum physics - old and new myths”. Since 2019 she is an Associate Editor of the journal International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, together with Professor Vasso Kindi (Editor in Chief) and Professor Miles Macleod (Associate Editor). Also, since 2020 she is a member of the Steering Committee of the East European Network for Philosophy of Science (EENPS).
Maria’s main research interests are in philosophy of physics (philosophy of quantum mechanics and philosophy of probabilities) and general philosophy of science.
Her work in NoMoS will focus on the status of the wavefunction in quantum mechanics. The key questions will be: Should the wavefunction be best understood (as nomic realists suggest) as part of the fundamental laws of nature? Or is it best to think of it as being grounded in the powers of the various particles in the universe? Is there room for unifying the law-based and the power-based views of the wavefunction?
Vanessa Seifert
Researcher
Vanessa's research interests lie in the philosophy and metaphysics of science, with a particular focus on chemistry and quantum physics. She has worked on the relation between chemistry and quantum mechanics, the nature of molecular structure, and the reality of chemical bonds. She has presented in major international conferences, such as the conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and the conference of the Aristotelean Society, and been invited to give talks at Harvard University, Cambridge, and the LSE. Among other journals, she has published her work in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science and the European Journal for Philosophy of Science. For more details, you can visit her personal website here.
Her work in NoMoS will focus on the periodic table. In particular, can we grant the periodic law the status of a fundamental law of nature? Is the periodic law fundamental in determining the properties of elements, as well as the similarity relations that hold between them?
LISA ZORZATO
Researcher
Lisa Zorzato is a postdoctoral researcher at the Kapodistrian and National University of Athens. She holds a Ph.D in Philosophy of Science at University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research interest revolves around the debate between realism and antirealism in philosophy of science. She has worked on questions concerning the nature of scientific explanations, specifically the role of models and analogies in theory change and theory constructions.
At NoMos she will focus on the theoretical issues that are required to develop a consistent ontological view such as the dualistic model does.
MARIALENA KARAMPATSOU
Researcher
Marialena Karampatsou is a postdoctoral researcher in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Athens. She holds a PhD from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has worked on Kant’s transcendental idealism and early criticisms thereof, offering a philosophical analysis of early criticisms around the status of the mind-independent world in Kant as well as a (realism-friendly) defense of Kantian idealism on that front. (For details on her published work you can visit her profile on PhilPeople.)
Her work in NoMoS focuses on questions of causation, powers, and lawhood in the history of modern philosophy – especially in Kant – in their connection to the philosophical concerns and proposals of the dualist approach.