Nicholas Maxwell


Nicholas Maxwell is a philosopher who has devoted much of his working life to arguing that there is an urgent need to bring about a revolution in academia so that it seeks and promotes wisdom and does not just acquire knowledge.
For nearly thirty years he taught philosophy of science at University College London, where he is now Emeritus Reader. In 2003 he founded Friends of Wisdom, an international group of people sympathetic to the idea that academic inquiry should help humanity acquire more wisdom by rational means. He has published eleven books spelling out different aspects of the argument for an intellectual revolution, from knowledge to wisdom, and has contributed to over thirty other books. He has published over eighty papers in scientific and philosophical journals on problems that range from consciousness, free will, value, and art to the rationality of science, simplicity, scientific realism, explanation, time and quantum theory.

Philosophical contribution

Maxwell's work has been devoted to tackling two fundamental interlinked problems:-

Problem 1: How can we understand our human world, embedded as it is within the physical universe, in such a way that justice is done both to the richness, meaning and value of human life on the one hand, and to what modern science tells us about the physical universe on the other hand?

Problem 2: What ought to be the overall aims and methods of science, and of academic inquiry more generally, granted that the basic task is to help humanity achieve what is of value – a more civilised world – by cooperatively rational means ?
In connection with Problem 1, Maxwell has put forward a version of the double-aspect theory, according to which experiential and physical features of things both exist.
In connection with Problem 2, Maxwell argues that the problematic aims of science, and of academic inquiry more generally, need much more honest and critical attention than they have received so far.

Criticism

Maxwell's books have been widely reviewed. His work is discussed by twelve scholars in Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom, edited by Leemon McHenry.
David Miller and Maxwell had a short exchange about Aim Oriented Empiricism, which was the central thesis of Maxwell's The Comprehensibility of The Universe.

Publications