ROBERT W. BATTERMAN

I received my PhD from the University of Michigan in 1987. My advisor was Lawrence Sklar. I am now distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. I am, thankfully, no longer department chair. Prior to my arrival in Pittsburgh, I was the Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario (2005–2010). Before that I spent 15 years in the Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. I’m the author of The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence (Oxford, 2002). I edited The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics (2013). I work in the philosophy of physics and philosophy of applied mathematics with a focus primarily upon the area of condensed matter broadly construed. My research interests include include the foundations of statistical physics, materials science, dynamical systems and chaos, asymptotic reasoning, mathematical idealizations, explanation, reduction, and emergence.