Wolfson College Cambridge: Dr Matt Farr

Position Governing Body Fellow
School Humanities and Social Sciences
Personal website mattfarr.co.uk
X Profile @philosofarr
Department link Dept of History and Philosophy of Science

Matt is a philosopher of science specialising in the nature of time and causality. He lectures in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Matt completed his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bristol, with a thesis on the arrow of time, before taking up postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Time (2013-2014) and the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry and Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems at the University of Queensland (2014-2017). In 2017, he joined the Department for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge as a Research and Teaching Associate, and since 2023, he has been an Associate Teaching Professor in the department.

Matt’s research explores the role played by basic metaphysical concepts like time and causation in scientific theories. For example, what properties of time need to be assumed in order to make sense of the world, and what questions about time and causation can be answered through experiment?

Much of Matt’s work has focussed on the directionality of time: e.g. in what sense do things in the world ‘go’ from earlier to later, and what role does this play in our understanding and experience of the world? He is currently writing a book defending his ‘C-theory’ of time, the idea that time is fundamentally directionless, and why this picture of time fits best with scientific theory.

Matt’s wider research covers the role of causality and explanation in science, primarily within physics and cognitive science. For instance, what are we to make of quantum correlations that don’t fit classical ideas of cause and effect? And in what sense are phenomenological features of the world, features of our first-personal experience of the world, to be explained by scientific theories?

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