Prof. Dr. Mathias Frisch

Mathias Frisch is a Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the DFG-funded Centre of Advanced Studies SOCRATES. He is co-editor in chief of the European Journal for Philosophy of Science (EJPS). Before his arrival at Leibniz University Hannover, he worked at the University of Maryland from 2003 to 2016. Prior to that he was an assistant professor at Northwestern University from 1998 from 2003. Mathias Frisch obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkeley in 1998 with a dissertation on the role of models in scientific explanation. He is the author of two books: Inconsistency, Asymmetry, and Non-Locality: A Philosophical Investigation of Classical Electrodynamics (Oxford University Press: 2005) and Causal Reasoning in Physics (Cambridge University Press: 2014). His main area of research is philosophy of science, ranging from the role of causation and the nature of laws in physics to philosophical issues arising in connection with the climate crisis, such as the treatment of deep uncertainties, and other social and ethical issues.

In the context of SOCRATES, Mathias Frisch will be working on challenges posed by uncertainties in science and will examine whether and how scientific findings can be credentialed and engender trust even under conditions of deep uncertainty. He is also interested in analysing the roles different representational tools play in science – including theories, models, and computer simulations – and examine to what extent these different tools can contribute to scientific understanding and whether the successful transmission of understanding may be a condition of establishing trustworthiness.