Christopher Oldfield

Curriculum Vitae

My professional life

I am a philosopher. I help teach modules in history and philosophy of science and religion at University College London, and work as a research associate of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in the University of Cambridge, where I occasionally supervise undergraduates in the Faculty of Philosophy. In 2025 I was a Visiting Lecturer in the University of Hertfordshire, St Mellitus College, and co-editor of a Special Issue of the journal Scientia et Fides on ‘Why Middle Sized Matters to Science and Religion’ with William Simpson.

Interests

My research has focussed on foundational questions in the logic of scientific metaphysics, with special interests in the history and interpretation(s) of “naturalism”, “materialism” and “physicalism”. I’m interested in the metaphysics of the manifest image, and ways of attending to things unseen in the scientific image. I’m very interested in the potential of organicist principles to reconcile a constructive empiricist or structural realist philosophy of the object of mathematical physics with a realistic philosophy of perception.

“…they suppose themselves to be above ‘metaphysics’ when in fact they are only a very little above it - being up to the neck in it.”

— Joseph Henry Woodger, Biological Principles (1929, p.246; II.V; §4)

Motivations

I aspire to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom and understanding. I once heard Brian Leftow say that the love of wisdom can take the forms of desire and delight, and I take one aim of philosophy to be to say the least stupid things we can find to say about a given subject. I grieve the poverty of our public discourse, especially what passes for an understanding of the virtues of science and religion. I hope to promote a more literate experience, to remedy the wealth of myth-understandings at work, inside and outside the philosophy room.

“Vouloir faire tenir la nature dans la science, ce serait faire entrer le tout dans la partie”

— Henri Poincaré, Science et Méthode (1920, p.8; §1 Le Choix des Faits)

I learned from James Ladyman, Bas van Fraassen, and Hans Halvorson to think of naturalism and empiricism as ways of asking ontological questions, not to be confused with an answer or the only way of asking them. I learned from Peter Harrison, Alasdair MacIntrye, and Maria Rosa Antognazza the true benefit to philosophy of the study of its history. I learned from Michael Friedman, Thomas Uebel and Nancy Cartwright that the physicalist manifesto of the Vienna Circle has been radically misunderstood. I learned from Janet Soskice, Peter van Inwagen and Merold Westphal how to think through confessions of faith, bewilderment and suspicion. I learned from Matthew Soteriou how much flows from the adoption of a temporal perspective, and how revisionary projects in metaphysics, once well motivated in the service of descriptive projects, can become unhinged. I am grateful to have learned from these and many other guiding lights, especially Tom McLeish, Rosa Antognazza, and Andrew Cooper,

Inspirations

“A confession of bewilderment is not a presentation of an argument for the thesis that anyone else should be bewildered by whatever it is that the speaker finds bewildering.”

— Peter van Inwagen [2011] 2014 Existence: Essays on Ontology, chapter 10: ‘Relational vs Constituent Ontologies’, p.210

Portfolio

Curicculum Vitae (PDF and online)
Photograph courtesy of 2022 workshop on Hylomorphism and Teleology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

2022 Workshop on Nature’s Goals, Hylomorphism and Teleology at Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge. Photograph courtesy of the organisers.

  • Lecturer (Selected)

    • University of Hertfordshire
      Metaphysics 2025-26

    • University College London
      Science and Religion in a Global Context
      - New Atheism 2024-25
      - Darwinism 2024-25

    • St Mellitus College
      - The New Atheism 2021-25

    • University of Oxford
      The Limits of Philosophy, Science and Religion (short course, with Stephen Law, 2022)

    • Fordham University
      Philosophical Ethics, 2016-19

    Tutor (Cambridge)

    Teaching Assistant (London)

    • UCL
      History of Modern Science
      Philosophy of Science
      Science and Religion

    • KCL
      Philosophy of Physics
      Metaphysics
      Philosophy of Psychology
      Philosophy of Religion
      Philosophy of Mind

    • Why Middle Sized Matters to Science and Religion, William Simpson and I co-edited this special issue of Scientia et Fides, Vol. 13, No. 2 (October 2025). Our editorial together with seminal contributions from Barbara Drossel, George Ellis, Hans Halvorson, Robert Koons, Emily Qureshi-Hurst, and Howard Robinson (among others) is now available online here.

    • The Activity View
      Following van Fraassen’s (2002) rejection of the meta-philosophical ‘Principle Zero’, I am working to develop an alternative way of thinking about what is at stake in debates about a range of philosophical ``-isms” (like “naturalism”, “physicalism”, “scientism”, etc). The Activity View promises to explain why arguments for/against specific theses often serve to generate more heat than light, by identifying a profound but persistent meta-philosophical error. The error is to mistake the spirit of an activity for the content of a theory.

    • The Logic of the Special Composition Question(s)
      Following my doctoral research project at King’s College London in which I sought (quite unsuccessfully) to recover the categorical significance of the logic of the special composition question(s), I am trying to address an hitherto unaddressed puzzle about a life inside the ontology room: what counts as a life in the life sciences/science of life?

      TL/DR: The logic of the special composition question(s) has been lost in translation by a series of attempts to render it intelligible in higher order singular terms of a modal restriction Ψ(S) in virtue of which ‘a class, S has a fusion’. In his (2021) examiner’s report, Eric Olson praised my attention to detail, calling it ‘a great service’ to the field. What was evidently less clear to my examiners was the philosophical significance of this discovery.

    • Naturalism without Content
      (Draft, Video from Krakow 2024)

    • Bound States and Living Organisms
      (Draft,, Audio from Bristol 2023)

    • Pan-Psyche-Ism
      (Draft)

    • Categorical Dualism
      (Draft, Audio from Oxford 2024)

    • The Unbecoming Ontology of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (Abstract)

    • Newman, Plantinga and Darwin’s Doubt (Draft, Slides from Warwick 2025)

    • The Activity View of Physicalism
      (Abstract)

    • When Are Fosters Parts?
      (Draft, Video from King’s 2024)

    • Hylomorphism and the Inverse Special Composition Question (Video, Oxford 2023),

    • The Attentional Stance
      (Draft, Audio from ISSR 2023)

    • God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonassies
      Seen and Unseen (first draft, published 2025)

    • Natural Philosophy (OUP), by Alister McGrath, Science and Christian Belief: 36/1:147-9 (2023)

    • Inventing the Universe, by Alister McGrath, Science and Christian Belief 27/1 : 134-5 (2017)

    • Mind and Cosmos (OUP), by Thomas Nagel,
      Science and Christian Belief 28/2: 103-4 (2015)

  • Memberships

    • European Society for Science and Theology (2024- present)

    • British Society for the History of Philosophy (2023-present)

    • International Society for Science and Religion (2023-present)

    • British Society for the Philosophy of Science (2022-present)

    • Postdoctoral Society of Trinity College, Cambridge (2022-2024)

    Employment

    • Teaching Assistant, Department for Science and Technology Studies, University College London (2023-)

    • Research Associate, The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge (2021-)

    • Adjunct Professor, London Faculty for Teaching, Fordham University (2016-2019)

Testimonials

2024 presentation on Thinking with Assent while Living with Doubts at Newman House, University College Dublin Photograph courtesy of the organisers of Wittgenstein, Newman and Hinge Epistemology

“I am indebted to Christopher Oldfield of the Faraday Institute at the University of Cambridge for his illuminating grasp of the scientific, philosophical, and theological dimensions of reductionism.”

— Jeremy Begbie, Duke Divinity School and the University of Cambridge

“Rigorous, clearly explained technical concepts, always available and responsive to questions.”
“He’s great, absolutely wonderful. I think I want to take this subject for a Masters”
“Helpful, informative seminars, Chris went out of his way to help me when I was struggling”

— Anonymous KCL Staff and Student teaching evaluations (avg 4.6/5.0)

“I wanted to thank you for your time and instruction. Science and Religion is in my top 3 favourite courses I have ever taken and gave me much to ponder after every class. I really enjoyed our conversations and how much attention you put into your lectures.”

“I just wanted to let you know […] how much I enjoyed our weekly seminars. You made the conversations so informative, digestible, and interesting! Truly made me more interested in the course, I looked forward to it every week.”

— Unsolicited UCL student emails from the 2024 HPS/BASC programme

“The image is not a certain meaning, expressed by the director, but the entire world, reflected as in a drop of water”

— Andrei Tarkovsky (1986) Sculpting in Time, p.110

Our common lot

“Il faut cultiver notre jardin” - Voltaire. 2024 Photograph courtesy of Jude Aytoun (Passio). Vibes have been rumoured to include The Soil by David Benjamin Blower, The Garden by Bobby Mcferrin, A Garden Disciple by Willie Jennings, Praying by Mary Oliver, Staying Power by Jeanne Murray Walker, and even the occasional Beats In Abundance.

Contact

2024 Symposium on Why Middle-Sized Matters for Science, Theology and Metaphysics, at All Souls College, in the University of Oxford. Photograph courtesy of the organisers.