Nicholas Maxwell

Location: London, UK
Work interests: All my work, in one way or another, is devoted to getting across the urgent need to transform academia so that it becomes rationally devoted to helping humanity discover and achieve what is of value in life, and make progress towards as good a world as possible
Affiliation/website: University College London
Preferred contact method: Private note via Research Co-op
Preferred contact language(s): English
Contact: nicholas dot maxwell at ucl.ac.uk
Favourite publications:

Location: London, UK
Work: Problem 1: How can we understand our human world, embedded as it is within the physical universe, in such a way that justice is done both to the richness, meaning and value of human life on the one hand, and to what modern science tells us about the physical universe on the other hand? Problem 2: What ought to be the overall aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally, granted that the basic task is to help humanity achieve what is of value – a wiser, more civilized world – by cooperatively rational means (it being assumed that knowledge and understanding can be of value in themselves and form a part of civilized life)? The first problem includes the mind/body problem, the problem of free will and determinism, and the problem of the relationship between facts and values; it includes problems concerning the relationship between perceptual and physical properties, and problems concerning the relationship between different branches of the sciences, from physics via biology to psychology. It involves problems concerning the interpretation of the neurosciences, Darwinian theory, and modern physical theory, especially quantum theory; and it involves questions concerning scientific realism, scientific essentialism and instrumentalism. The second problem includes standard epistemological and methodological problems about scientific progress, the rationality of science, the aims and methods of natural and social science. But it goes beyond these standard issues in embracing the whole of academic inquiry - the humanities, technological research and education in addition to natural and social science - and in raising the question of how inquiry, in this broad sense, can best help people realize what is genuinely of value in life. It is very definitely not assumed that the proper intellectual aim of inquiry is knowledge.
Biographical: I have devoted much of my working life to arguing that we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that it promotes wisdom and does not just acquire knowledge. I have published five books on this theme: What’s Wrong With Science? (Bran's Head Books, 1976), From Knowledge to Wisdom (Blackwell, 1984; 2nd edition, Pentire Press, 2007), The Comprehensibility of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Human World in the Physical Universe (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) and Is Science Neurotic? (Imperial College Press, December 2004). I have also contributed to a number of other books, and have published numerous papers in science and philosophy journals on problems that range from consciousness to quantum theory. For nearly thirty years I taught philosophy of science at University College London, where I am now Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science. On 3rd February 2009 a book is to be published devoted to my work, edited by Leemon McHenry, called Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom (Ontos Verlag). My website URL, where more information about my life and work may be found, is: www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk