Professor Dr Michela Massimi

Research Priorities: The nature of scientific knowledge, pluralism and perspectivism in scientific practice, science policy, the right to science, cultural rights, local knowledge, ocean governance
Michela Massimi is an Italo-British philosopher of science, whose work centres on the philosophy and history of the natural sciences. She is interested in fundamental questions such as: what is the nature of scientific knowledge? What role for pluralism and perspectivism in scientific practices? What is the value of local knowledge? And how to ensure equitable policy and governance systems in science? In line with these foundational questions, she does research in many different fields, ranging from philosophy of particle physics and cosmology to philosophical issues arising in the right to science and ocean governance, more recently.
In her philosophical work and decade-long collaborations with scientists (from particle physics to cosmology, from nuclear physics to marine science more recently), Michela Massimi has endeavoured to bring in dialogue philosophy and the natural sciences. Professor Massimi’s intellectual journey started with scholarly work on Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of nature, and the influence of the Kantian tradition in modern physics, especially philosophical discussions that physicists such as Albert Einstein, Max Born and Niels Bohr conducted in the early 20th century about the meaning of physical reality in the context of quantum physics.
Michela Massimi has been a tireless ambassador for the importance of these interdisciplinary debates, which often today have fallen out of fashion. Nowadays, researchers often tend to focus on ever more narrowly defined specialist areas. At the same time, their work is expected to have a clearly defined use for a certain group of people. By contrast, Michela Massimi’s work has systematically engaged with a wide range of foundational questions about the nature of science and scientific knowledge as part of our cultural history and a key defining feature of humanity. The question of the interplay between reality and the natural sciences, which greatly interested the scientists who discovered quantum physics, continues to interest Massimi today: How to think of scientific knowledge? What is the nature of physical reality? Or, in the Kantian tradition, how to think of physical phenomena that are the objects of scientific knowledge?
In this context, Massimi has articulated a new philosophical position – “perspectival realism”— whereby questions about the reliability of scientific knowledge and the nature of physical reality are re-framed by placing center stage the human vantage point. Scientific knowledge, Massimi has argued, is perspectival through and through: it is the product of myriad epistemic communities that are historically and culturally situated. Massimi sees this pluralism and perspectivism as the driving engine behind the reliability of science.
In addition to such foundational-philosophical questions, Professor Massimi works also on science policy and global governance issues. In cooperation with experts from the fields of ocean science, international law, and policy-making, Massimi has been investigating epistemic injustices at play in marine science and possible ways forward for a more inclusive and more equitable global ocean governance when it comes to the fair use of the oceans’ resources, capacity building, technology transfer, access and benefit sharing. Ultimately, Michela Massimi sees working on such projects as an integral part of better implementing the human right to science (Art 27 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights). The so-called right to science, its relation to cultural rights, and to broader questions about epistemic injustices, pluralism and perspectivism in science remains one of Massimi’s current areas of active research.