Christopher Oldfield

Curriculum Vitae

My professional life

I am a philosopher and 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. I am a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Science and Technology Studies of University College London, where I help teach courses in the history and philosophy of science and religion.

Last year (2025) I was appointed to be a Visiting Lecturer teaching Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Hertfordshire, and a Guest Editor of the journal Scientia et Fides for a Special Issue on ‘Why Middle Sized Matters to Science and Religion’ which I co-edited with William Simpson. Prior to this, I was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford (2022), and an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University (2016-19),

“Philosophy has many tasks, yet in our age the task of bracketing and seeing, of uncovering our forgotten sense of the cosmos, and of our lives therein, may be one of the most urgent."

— Erazim Kohák (1984) The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature, p.26; chapter 1: Theoria

Interests

My philosophical research addresses foundational questions in the logic and practice of scientific metaphysics. I have special interests in the history and interpretation(s) of “physicalism” and “naturalism” in the philosophy of mind. I’m interested in the metaphysics of the manifest image, and ways of attending to things unseen in the scientific image. I’m interested in the use of organicist principles to reconcile a constructive empiricist philosophy of the object of mathematical physics with a realist philosophy of the objects 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)

I aspire to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom and understanding. I once heard Brian Leftow say the love of wisdom can take the forms of desire and delight. I desire to understand much that I do not yet, and I delight to understand what (little) I can. Besides my personal and professional interests, I grieve the poverty of our public discourse, especially what passes for an understanding of the virtues (or the vices) of science and religion in our time. I aspire to promote a more literate experience, and to do whatever I can to remedy the wealth of myth-understandings at work, inside and outside the philosophy room.

Motivations

“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 MacIntyre and Maria Rosa Antognazza of the deep benefit to philosophy of the study of its history. I learned from Michael Friedman, Thomas Uebel and Nancy Cartwright how the physicalist manifesto of the Vienna Circle has been radically misunderstood; and from Janet Soskice, Peter van Inwagen and Merold Westphal 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, risk becoming unhinged.

Inspirations

Stock photograph of some magnificent Noctilucent Clouds. I once beheld something similar in the midnight sky on the Suffolk coast. Brighter than Venus it was. The evening was calm, the air so still, but for the smoke of the fire. We sat there, bewildered, between the embers and the stars.

“Better real confusion than false clarity; better real darkness than misleading light.”

— Fr. Thomas Hopko

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 2024-25

    • University College London
      Science and Religion
      - New Atheism 2023-25
      - Darwinism 2024-25

    • St Mellitus College
      - New Atheism 2021-25

    • University of Oxford
      The Limits of Philosophy, Science and Religion (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.

    • “Modern Science Yes, Western Science No!” Needham’s World and the May 4th Movement (Abstract)

    • The Manifest Invalidity of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (Draft)

    • Myth-understanding Scientific Agency:
      the Tragedy of Scientism in a Secular Age
      (Draft)

    • Naturalism without Content:
      Where Plantinga’s Conflict Actually Lies
      (Draft, Video from Krakow 2024)

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

    • Pan-Psyche-Ism
      (Draft)

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

    • Thinking with Assent,Living with Doubts: Questions as Modes of Holding Propositions (Handout from Newman House UCD 2024)

    • Categorical Dualism
      (Draft, Audio from Oxford 2024)

    • The Activity View of Physicalism
      (Abstract from Cambridge 2024)

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

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

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

    • 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)

    • 2026 God, the Brain and the Nature of Truth: Comments on Iain McGilchrist’s Boyle Lecture, ISSR YouTube channel

    • 2025 Discussion on Physicalism on Dr Nathan Hawkins YouTube channel (unedited, edited)

    • 2024 On Praise of Love an Being in Love as an Ethical Idea (video, slides); St Ethelberger’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, London

    • 2024 The Metaphysics of Pregnancy: dispatches from the B.U.M.P. debates (Podcast, Slides), Program for Medicine, Spirituality and Religion, Yale University

    • 2023 Extended Q+A with Iain McGilchrist on The Matter with Things at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (online)

    • 2023 `Can A Rational Person Believe in Miracles?' (1 minute response to prompt) Universities and colleges Christian Fellowship

    • 2022 `The Selfish Green?’ (audio): panel on the religious roots of the Anthropocene (with Mazviita Chirimuuta, Timothy Howles, Hannah Malcolm), Greenbelt Festival

    • 2022 The Limits of Philosophy, Science and Religion (with Stephen Law), Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford

    • 2021 Epiphany (article),
      Christchurch London Broadcast

    • 2019 The Myth of Conflict (article), Christchurch London Broadcast

    • 2017 Science, Religion and the Ethics of Belief, (Evening Lecture) Institute of Physics: Northern Branch, University of Leeds

    • 2017 Science, Religion and the Business of Knowledge, (online) for Faraday short course, Department of Physics, University of Hull

    • 2016 Who’s Afraid of Naturalism? (article) Pulse magazine 22 (Spring 2016): 22-26

  • 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)

“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 Relational vs Constituent Ontologies; in Existence: Essays on Ontology, p.210

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 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.