Doctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy of Science (EXPIRED)

A Doctoral Research Fellowship in philosophy of science is available at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo.

The Doctoral Research Fellowship is associated with the project “AssemblingLife” funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Many complex structures and processes of life are at least partly the result of spontaneous self-assembly processes. In the AssemblingLife project, a central aim is, within the framework of philosophy of science, to develop new ideas of life and life science explanation by bringing in the increasing knowledge and awareness of self-assembly processes from various scientific fields (for example nanoscience, molecular biology and soft material science). Important objectives are to provide a comprehensive analysis of the concept and idea of self-assembly across fields and scales and to decipher differences, similarities and connections between self-assembly and ideas of self-organization of living systems. The project aims to challenge (but also to build on) existing accounts of explanation in philosophy of biology and life sciences, such as current accounts of genetic causation as well as mechanist and interventionist ideas of explanation. It is also a central goal to explicate how several explanatory frameworks, such as for example biophysics and molecular biology, may compete and/or integrate from the viewpoint of self-assembly processes. The project aims at building bridges between mechanist and organicist views of life, to provide new answers to questions of scientific explanation, the relation between scales and levels of explanation, and ultimately to the question of how to understand life itself.

This PhD position will be specifically associated with one of two research strands in AssemblingLife:
(1) One strand considers how the understanding of genetic causation may be transformed by bringing in current knowledge about self-assembly processes. One possible route would be to investigate genetic material as “nudgers” of self-assembly processes.
(2) A second research focus will be an investigation of the concept and idea of self-assembly across fields and scales, and how it connects to the idea of self-organization in living systems. The candidate´s proposed doctoral research need not address these topics exactly as described here. Candidates should, though, in their research description and application address how their proposed research relates to one of the research strands described.