Rate My Professor Mark Colyvan

Mark Colyvan is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He earned an Associate Diploma in Applied Science from RMIT University, a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of New England, and a PhD from the Australian National University. Colyvan also holds positions as Honorary Professor at the School of Philosophy, Australian National University, and Visiting Professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians University. His research spans philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, decision theory, environmental philosophy, ecology, and conservation biology. Current projects include ARC-funded work on formal approaches to legal reasoning, laws, models, and analogies in ecology, mathematical notation, and mathematical explanation, as well as studies on decision and risk in environmental science and group decision methods.

Colyvan has authored key books such as The Indispensability of Mathematics (Oxford University Press, 2001), Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow (with Lev R. Ginzburg, Oxford University Press, 2004), and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Recent publications include 'Do Conspiracy-Theory Interventions Rest on a Mistake?' in Synthese (2025, with Tim Smartt and Hannah Tierney), 'Meta-uncertainty and the Proof Paradoxes' in Philosophical Studies (2023, with Katie Steele), and 'The Prospects for a Monist Theory of Non-causal Explanation in Science and Mathematics' in Erkenntnis (2022, with Alexander Reutlinger and Karolina Krzyżanowska). He has received an ARC Future Fellowship (2012–2016) for mathematical explanation research, the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award (2017–2019), and a Senior Fellowship at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz (2023–2024). Colyvan served as President of the Australasian Association of Philosophy (2005–2006) and the Society for Risk Analysis (Australia and New Zealand) (2013). He has been on the editorial boards of Australasian Journal of Philosophy (since 2003), Philosophia Mathematica (since 2019), Conservation Letters (2011–2021), and The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic (2009–2017). Visiting positions include the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (2004) and the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (2002–2003).