The Frontiers of Knowledge Award goes to Nancy Cartwright for her use of philosophy to strengthen scientific rationality and ground the adoption of effective, evidence-based public policies

In her writings, the philosopher brings a perspective to what science is and how it can be applied that moves beyond certain influential notions – like the idea that science is merely a combination of theory and experiment, that all scientific knowledge can be reduced to physics, and that both science and the natural and social worlds obey deterministic patterns.

She has analyzed research theories and methods across multiple domains of both the natural and social sciences with attention to all the findings and products of science, not just its theoretical models and experiments. For, she argues, it is only the diverse, multifaceted array of methodological tools and scientific constructs that can guide us to a gradual albeit piecemeal understanding of the world’s complexity.

The committee noted also that her philosophical framework extends to an analysis of the methodological tools and models of the social sciences, in order to substantiate “evidence-based public policy decisions.”

One of her nominators, Luis Valdés, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oviedo, explains that Prof. Cartwright “has advanced our understanding of how science achieves the successes that it does. In opposition to abstract philosophical theories of science, she has contributed decisively to defining such key questions in the practice of science as causality, objectivity and evidence.”

“This award distinguishes a leading intellectual who has made a signal contribution from the realm of philosophy to an improved understanding of science methodology, with regard to both basic and social sciences,” said selection committee chair Atocha Aliseda, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Institute for Philosophical Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “Her body of work has provided many key insights into how we can ascertain whether an experimental finding is reliable, whether a methodological approach is right for the specific research objective sought, and, consequently, how we can make the best evidence-based decisions.”

For committee member Genoveva Martí, ICREA Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, “among the purposes of philosophy is to reflect on the process of acquiring knowledge. The word ‘science’ derives from the Latin verb scire, meaning ‘to know.’ Science is knowledge. Nancy Cartwright has pioneered a practical analysis of how we come to understanding something scientifically, demonstrating with precision how science advances knowledge.” The philosopher’s career, she adds, “speaks of trust in science, and the primordial importance of evidence to support the claims made in any field of research. Her recognition with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities is especially relevant today, when, sadly, rationality and scientific evidence are increasingly being called into question.”

An innovative approach to understand and defend the robustness of science

Cartwright was raised in a Presbyterian community in Pennsylvania, where from a young age she was obliged to rehearse rational arguments on metaphysical and ethical matters. “I was brought up as a Calvinist, in a fiercely intellectual environment, where debate was the order of the day. I learned to argue for and against the existence of God, on the problem of evil, and issues of freedom of the will,” she recalled in an interview granted after hearing of the award. Later, at university, she enrolled as a mathematics major, but the experience of these metaphysical debates had sparked an interest in philosophy, and she ended up devoting her professional career to this field.

“Partly because of my Christian background, I had a keen social awareness, and I thought that philosophy shouldn’t just be some idle thing you did for fun, but should be used to change the world,” adds Cartwright, who initially specialized in the philosophy of physics. In doing so, she became increasingly critical of the excessive importance attached to universal laws: “I did a lot of work with lasers, which have quantum theory at their core, but I was surprised to learn that they weren’t actually made in the physics department, but in the engineering department. And although quantum theory was basic for doing a lot of that stuff, it was quickly left behind, and instead you had a lot of classical physics, along with engineering know-how, and knowledge of materials, and so forth. Physics is a hugely successful tool, which we know how to use successfully, and it does describe things that exist, but to think that there is a properly formulated universal statement which everything we do falls under seems to me so much pie in the sky.”

Another experience that fed into this view was when she was an observer in the 1970s on the Stanford Gravity Probe experiment, which sent four gyroscopes into space to test the general theory of relativity. As it turned out, “you couldn’t bring the resulting information under any of those laws, but all of them gave a little piece of the picture.” Cartwright expressed some of this thinking in her 1989 book How the Laws of Physics Lie – a fairly provocative title, she admits. In it, she contended that the fundamental laws of physics, often regarded as the most profound descriptions of reality, are in fact idealizations that hold true only in highly controlled and simplified models.

“Generally speaking, these laws are only used at a certain stage in the research process. After that, we use something else, and then we turn to another bit of knowledge.” Only in this way, she argues, can we get an accurate picture of how things behave in the real world.

This was a radical departure from the idealized view of physics laws as universal and exceptionless. In her book The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science, published in 1999, Cartwright presented her alternative to the idea of a single, unified theory of everything that would encompass and explain all the forces of nature. Rather than a world ordered by elegant, overarching laws, Cartwright defended a “dappled” reality, a patchwork of domains or disciplines, each with its own set of locally applicable laws and causal structures. This “patchwork” view also suggested that sciences like biology and economics are not merely reducible to physics but possess their own autonomous principles.

Cartwright’s goal in her writings has been to use the perspective of philosophy to provide a more precise and effective understanding of scientific practice and its results. Her focus, as such, has been on exploring how scientific concepts and theories relate to the world we live in, how science is practiced in specific contexts, and how scientific findings can be used to make evidence-based decisions. Rigorous arguments, she insists, require different types of evidence from a diverse set of disciplines to support the varied claims contained in the premises.

A novel philosophical framework extending its reach into the social sciences

As well as producing work that integrates and advances philosophical thought on physics and the natural sciences, Cartwright has been a pioneer in taking her vision to the social sciences. The opportunity came when in 1991 she was offered the Popper Chair at the London School of Economics, and she has focused since on developing models and methodologies that can serve as a foundation for evidence-based public policies.

One of her main contributions to the field has been to demonstrate that the humanities can produce crucial knowledge for addressing pressing practical problems alongside the empirical knowledge produced by social scientists: “I am a big advocate of interdisciplinarity and have continually pressed for the need for more interdisciplinary cooperation. For instance, I love economics and there are these wonderful, very precise economic models. But the real world is far more complex than these models suggest. We can get useful economic lessons from them, but again – as in physics – they need to be combined with other knowledge.”

This practical approach is also apparent in one of her landmark research projects: “Knowledge for Use: Making the Most of the Social Sciences to Build Better Policies,” an interdisciplinary collaboration between academics and professionals running from 2015 to 2015, with funding from the European Research Council. “I had the chance to work with an interdisciplinary team looking at policy rollout in Greater Manchester in areas like child protection, education and support for getting people into work. I think we made a lot of helpful suggestions on how to apply philosophy to make better use of scientific knowledge by bringing it together with local and experiential knowledge,” says the philosopher, who considers this project one of the great successes of her career.

Cartwright champions a pluralist view of science and causality that draws on different disciplines and methodological perspectives to determine exactly which causal claim the evidence supports: “What worries me is that ‘cause’ is a big word, a very abstract word, and we use it in a variety of different ways. So what matters to me is that the use you want to make of that label is supported by the evidence that allows you to put the label on.”

In sum, her work in the social sciences has provided a more nuanced understanding of causality in the social setting, which can serve in turn to optimize public policy decisions based on the best possible evidence.

Laureate bio notes

Nancy Cartwright (New Castle, Pennsylvania, United States, 1944) received her BSc in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, then went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Illinois with a dissertation titled “A Philosophical Analysis of the Concept of Mixture in Quantum Mechanics.” Her academic career took her successively to the universities of Maryland and Stanford and the London School of Economics, where she was a founder and later head of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences. Currently Professor of Philosophy at Durham University (United Kingdom) and a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego (United States), in 2025-2026 she is combining her duties there with those of Centenary Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford. Cartwright is also Co-Director of the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) at Durham, Honorary Distinguished Professor at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), and a Research Associate at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa), where she is also a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy. She has authored or edited over 17 books (the latest, Causal Processes and their Warrant, due out this coming May 14), and more than 200 articles and book chapters, and has served on the editorial boards of twenty-five leading academic journals, including Philosophy of Science, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice and Journal of Economic Methodology.

Nominators

A total of 41 nominations were received in this edition, comprising 31 candidates. The awardee researcher was nominated by Nick Cowen, Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln (United Kingdom), Kathryn Joyce, Director of the Civil Discourse for Citizenship Program at the Center for Ethics and Human Values of the Ohio State University (United States), and Luis Manuel Valdés Villanueva, Emeritus Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Oviedo (Spain).

Humanities committee and evaluation support panel

The committee in this category was chaired by Atocha Aliseda, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science in the Institute for Philosophical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with Carmen Sanz Ayán, Professor of Modern History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) acting as secretary.

Remaining members were José María Fernández Cardo, Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Oviedo (Spain); Genoveva Martí, ICREA Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona (Spain); José Manuel Sánchez Ron, Emeritus Professor of History of Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and a member of the Real Academia Española; and Darío Villanueva, Emeritus Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and a member of the Real Academia Española.

The evaluation support panel charged with nominee pre-assessment was coordinated by Elena Cartea, Deputy Vice-President of Scientific-Technical Areas at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Ana María Crespo Solana, Deputy Coordinator of the Society Global Area and Scientific Researcher at the Institute of History (IH, CSIC). Its members were: Elea Jiménez Toledo, Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Language, Literature and Anthropology (ILLA, CSIC); Elías López-Romero González de la Aleja, Tenured Scientist at the Archeological Institute of Mérida; Daniel Riaño Rufilanchas, Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East (ILC, CSIC); and Astrid Wagner, Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Philosophy (IFS, CSIC).

About the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

The BBVA Foundation centers its activity on the promotion of world-class scientific research and cultural creation, and its transmission to society, along with the recognition of talent through families of awards organized alone or in conjunction with scientific societies and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, funded with 400,000 euros in each of their eight categories, recognize and reward contributions of singular impact in basic sciences, biomedicine, environmental sciences and climate change, social sciences, economics, the humanities and music. The goal of the awards, established in 2008, is to celebrate and promote the value of knowledge as a global public good, the best tool at our command to confront the defining challenges of our time and expand individual worldviews. Their eight categories are congruent with the knowledge map of the 21st century.

A total of 34 Frontiers of Knowledge laureates in the 17 editions held to date have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

The BBVA Foundation is partnered in these awards by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the country’s premier public research organization. CSIC appoints evaluation support panels made up of leading experts in the corresponding knowledge area, who are charged with undertaking an initial assessment of candidates and drawing up a reasoned shortlist for the consideration of the award committees. CSIC is also responsible for designating each committee’s chair across the eight prize categories and participates in the selection of remaining members, helping to ensure objectivity in the recognition of those who have achieved particularly significant advances in science and in music. The presidency of CSIC also has a prominent role in the awards ceremony held each year in Bilbao, the permanent home of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards.