Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at Durham University and the University of California, San Diego, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities. The award, sponsored by the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Foundation, was given to Professor Cartwright in recognition of “her use of philosophy to strengthen scientific rationality and ground the adoption of effective, evidence-based public policies.” The award includes a prize of 400,000 euros (approximately $464,000). From the award announcement: For five decades now, Cartwright’s seminal work has “built a bridge between philosophy and the actual practice of science” through her innovative vision of such key concepts as causality and the laws of nature. 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 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.” Eight BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are bestowed every year, one in each of the following categories: basic sciences, biomedicine, environmental sciences and climate change, social sciences, economics, the humanities, and music. This is the 18th year the awards have been issued. More information about the Professor Cartwright’s award is here.

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