Doctoral position, M/F, Philosophy of Science, Nancy, France. Explanatory progress and degrees of understanding

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https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR7117-CYRIMB-005/Default.aspx?lang=EN

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Doctoral position, M/F, Philosophy of Science, Nancy, France. Explanatory progress and degrees of understanding

Topic. Explanatory progress and degrees of understanding in the mathematical / mathematized science.

Application deadline: April 23

Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]

Applications should be made through the CNRS job software interface.

The doctoral candidate will investigate how explanations of specific phenomena and their understanding can be gradably improved when these phenomena are covered by existing well-entrenched theories, laws, or models, have mathematical descriptions, and mathematical methods contribute to their exploration. For example (the following list is not exhaustive), approximation schemes, series expansions, perturbation techniques, renormalization group methods, asymptotic analysis, optimization strategies, or coarse-grained/fine-grained approaches contribute to investigating physical phenomena and potentially improving their explanations. Specific attention will be devoted to identifying, describing, and discussing case studies that exemplify improvements in explanatory value and/or understanding. Examples are expected to be drawn from physics, and strong connections to the literature on explanation and understanding are required. A cross-comparison with similar questions in mathematics may be welcome.


Keywords. Scientific Explanation. Understanding. Knowledge. Gradability. (Degrees of) Progress. Applied Mathematics. Physics.

The candidates are encouraged to engage with relevant parts of the recent literature about these questions.

The candidate will carry out his/her doctoral dissertation within the framework of the research project GRASP (“Gradability across Science and Epistemic Practices”), which was funded by the ANR in 2025 for 4 years (start date: April 2026; PI: Cyrille Imbert)

(https://anr.fr/fileadmin/aap/2025/selection/aapg-2025-selection.pdf, p. 313).

As such, the doctoral candidate will benefit from an excellent research environment with the opportunity to interact regularly with the researchers involved in the project and participate in the corresponding research activities. Interactions with other researchers and domains within the project (in particular philosophers of (applied) mathematics) are expected.

The GRASP project is devoted to analyzing how success is gradably achieved in particular activities, both in the empirical and formal sciences.

A specificity of the GRASP project is to put together general philosophers of science, mainstream epistemologists, and philosophers of physics, mathematics, applied mathematics, and biology (in particular Cyrille Imbert, Vincent Ardourel, Marianna Antonutti Marfori, Jean-Marie Chevalier, Alberto Naibo, Philippe Huneman, Andy Arana, Yacin Hamami; Jacques-Henri Vollet).

The GRASP project has a strong international dimension. The PhD candidate is expected to leverage the international networks and activities related to the project and its members.

Supervision. The successful candidate will be supervised by Cyrille Imbert (AHP, CNRS, Université de Lorraine) together with another researcher at IHPST (expectedly Vincent Ardourel, IHPST, CNRS, Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne).

Starting date. September 1, 2026 (but may be somewhat flexible).

More details on the website.