Meet Dr Cristian Larroulet Philippi, RW Seddon Fellow in Philosophy of Science

This year, we were delighted to welcome Dr Cristian Larroulet Philippi as the inaugural RW Seddon Fellow in the History and Philosophy of Science program. With a background in economics and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, Dr Larroulet Philippi was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. His research explores the development and justification of quantitative concepts, the role of measurement in the human sciences, and the intersection of scientific objectivity and values.

In this interview, PhD candidate Thomas Spiteri speaks with Dr Larroulet Philippi about his intellectual journey, his transition from economics to philosophy, and his current work on quantification in science. They discuss his ongoing projects, his aspirations for the Seddon Fellowship, and how his research engages with broader methodological and epistemic questions in the sciences.

Cristian, could you tell us a bit about your academic journey so far, from your background in economics to your work in the history and philosophy of science? What initially drew you to these areas?

I started academic life studying economics in a very traditional (mainstream) economics department in Chile. There wasn’t much in the curriculum about, say, the history of economic thought, nor a lot of reflection on the methodological assumptions built into standard economic research or the political dimension of the discipline. The “economic approach to human behavior”, as Gary Becker famously named it, was not considered controversial or in much need of justification.

From day one, however, I was dissatisfied with this way of treating the subject matter. So, in my first years of undergraduate, I spent a lot of time searching for alternatives to the “economic approach”, and for deeper reflections on the assumptions behind social science research. (In Chile we already have long undergraduate degrees, but mine definitely took much longer!)

I started taking courses on anthropology, participated in Marxist reading groups, and then went on to take all the available courses on theoretical sociology. But one semester I took a course on Kant’s epistemology and another one on philosophy of science—and this made it clear to me that the questions I was very interested in were being discussed in philosophy, especially philosophy of science.

Although I continued studying economics (completing a masters) and even worked for some years as a researcher in economics, I slowly started my transition to philosophy of science. Doing an MSc at the London School of Economics (LSE) in philosophy of the social sciences—especially reading the work of people like Nancy Cartwright, Helen Longino, Ian Hacking, and Philip Kitcher—further confirmed which discipline I wanted to pursue an academic career in.

Looking back, the kind of questions that drove me to philosophy of science—questions about objectivity and politics in science—were much bigger in scope than what I work on today, which I guess is common (here is a great talk by one of my two PhD supervisors, Anna Alexandrova, narrating how during her PhD her questions got narrowed down). I hope to go back to some of the bigger questions sooner rather than later.

The RW Seddon Fellowship at the University of Melbourne emphasises research on scientific knowledge creation, theory generation, and reasoning. What aspects of this role are most exciting to you, and how do they align with your previous work?

My main current research project concerns quantitative concepts—how they emerged across the sciences, and how their deployment has been (and should be) justified, especially in the human sciences.

Now, there is a way of looking at scientific measurement that renders it rather trivial: There are properties out there in the world, and we just measure them. Measurement is not too different from observation on this view, perhaps only in that we always use an instrument, which typically allows for more precision.

In this way of looking at measurement, notions like scientific discovery or concept construction are absent. Yet so many of the concepts that today are routinely measured—temperature, earthquake size, fitness, utility, mathematical ability—were not even conceived as quantitative not too long ago.

How can we understand current ways of measuring these concepts without understanding which discoveries (if any) led to the emergence of these concepts?  Which tests were or had to be performed? How did the theories to which these concepts belong emerge? What metaphors or analogies were deployed? And so on. As I see things, questions around quantification are intimately connected to questions of concept construction and theory generation. I’m looking forward to work out those connections in detail during my fellowship.

Your research explores quantitative measurement in the social and medical sciences, causal inference, and scientific objectivity. How do you see this work evolving at the University of Melbourne? Are there particular case studies or methodological debates you’re especially keen to explore?

There are several topics that I am very excited to work on during the next years.

During my Fellowship, I will continue working with my former colleague Miguel Ohnesorge on quantification in seismology. So far, we have largely focused on the origin and development of the first quantitative measure of “earthquake size”—mostly studying the work of Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg at Caltech. We think this case study has a lot to teach to the current literature.

Basically, much of the current scholarship on measurement focuses on standard cases of laboratory-based physics (length, time, temperature, electric current). Accordingly, high degrees of experimental control are typically taken to be essential for quantification. Yet seismologists managed to quantify “earthquake size” with relatively few degrees of experimental control—you cannot manipulate the size of an earthquake nor ensure that the waves produced pass through a similar medium across the whole world! How they managed this and how much their strategies may be relevant in other domains that also lack experimental control is what we are working on.

We also want to relate this development to other areas of seismology. In particular, I’m interested in studying how these quantification efforts have a bearing on the policy side of seismology, that is, hazard prevention. In other words, I’m interested in looking at to which extent the search for a unidimensional quantitative concept to represent something as complex as an earthquake, has helped not only to spur a theoretically fruitful research program, but also one that can help deliver the knowledge that communities facing seismic hazards need.

Another interest of mine is in linking traditional debates about measurement to the measurement of fitness in evolutionary biology. Fitness is interesting in many regards. For example, philosophers have had tons to say about the concept of fitness without saying much about its actual empirical measurement. It looks as if philosophical views that keep the conceptual very tied to the empirical—think of operationalism, which takes the meaning of theoretical concepts to be partly constituted by the concrete operations that scientists deploy for measuring these concepts—cannot make much sense of this case. There is much more to be said here, of course. Given how strong the Australian community of philosophers of biology is, I am hopeful that this fellowship at Melbourne will help me pursue this research.

You’ve noted that social and medical sciences often face difficult debates about method, objectivity, and politics, yet they have profound implications for policy. How do you think philosophers of science can contribute to these discussions?

I think that philosophers of science, as much as historians of science and science scholars more generally, are very well placed to contribute to these discussions. In so far we are trained to know the details of the scientific research at stake while keeping a critical eye on the assumptions (both epistemic and normative) that are not problematised by scientists in their daily work, we occupy a privileged position. We are well placed not only to assess scientific research and its policy impact, but also to help establish fruitful dialogues between expert scientists, other scientists not experts in the topic, policy makers, and the public more generally. This doesn’t mean we are owed some kind of authority; only that by our own training we are well placed to collaborate in interdisciplinary spaces and in spaces where science bears on policy and society.

Your work considers the role of moral and political values in scientific reasoning. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions—among scientists, policymakers, or philosophers—about how values shape scientific knowledge?

This is a large topic (and I’ve already talked a lot!): we could talk about misconceptions (or problematic assumptions) of the public, of the scientists, and of scholars of science.

To mention one example from my own field, I think philosophers studying values in science have unfortunately assumed (even if it is never explicitly articulated) that the most interesting and important stage of scientific research for studying how values enter into science is that of the confirmation of hypotheses by evidence. Since much of the discipline during the last century focused on issues of confirmation, this assumption is understandable. But it leads to, for example, an explosion of research on the argument from inductive risk (following up Heather Douglas’ 2000 paper in Phil Sci), while we understudy many other aspects of scientific practice: the selection of the topic of research, the choice of central theoretical concepts to use, the scoping of the evidence, the justification of the methods, the selection of what to report, and much more. I hope exciting work will be done in these topics in the next years.

You’ve been active in public philosophy and outreach, and you were recently interviewed for the HPS podcast, for example. What role do you see for public engagement in your work, and how can philosophy of science contribute to broader discussions beyond academia?

As an academic working on a specialised subfield, the temptation to speak largely to your peers, using language that only they will understand, can be a very strong one. There must be a time and space for writing only to your peers, but we can’t let that soak up all of our energies. As we’ve been discussing, people working in science studies sit in between different disciplines and have the potential to contribute to the dialogue between experts and the public. I think this makes it even more relevant for us that we bring our own ideas about science to public fora. This is one important dimension of public philosophy and outreach, and an ideal that I hope to better emulate in the years to come.

Another important dimension is to help disseminate ideas that are lesser-known due to the authors’ positions in global structures, and to help disseminate ideas to publics that have less access to academic outputs. It was in this spirit that I launched a Spanish-speaking podcast, FICICO, back in 2021, together with two other Chilean philosophers of science. The podcast showcases research done by science scholars from Latin America and Spain. We have been in pause mode for a while now, but I hope to bring it back to life again once I’ve fully settled in Melbourne.

What advice would you give to early-career researchers working across disciplines in HPS, particularly those interested in measurement and scientific reasoning?

I’ve found the HPS community of scholars working on measurement extremely welcoming and engaging. Moreover, there is a lot of interest coming from scientific practitioners themselves (at least in the case of the human sciences). This makes it a great space to work in—so, enjoy!

Thank you, Dr Larroulet Philippi, for sharing your insights and reflections on your research and the broader role of philosophy in understanding science. We look forward to following your work during your time at Melbourne and beyond!