Tarja Knuuttila

'Modelling biological possibilities: A philosophical perspective'

Tarja Knuuttila has been Professor of Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, since August 2018. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina (USA). She holds a PhD  in theoretical philosophy from the University of Helsinki. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Science & Technology Studies from 2007 to 2010 and is an elected member of Academia Europaea and the European Academy of Sciences.

She was a recipient of the ERC Consolidator Grant project 'Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology' (2019-2024). She is currently involved as a co-Principal Investigator in the John Templeton Foundation project, 'Pushing the Boundaries: Agency, Evolution, and the Dynamic Emergence of Expanding Possibilities' (2022-2025).

In her research, Knuuttila focuses on scientific representation and modeling, as well as interdisciplinary relationships between different scientific domains. Her approach is comparative; she has studied modeling in neuroscience, economics, ecology, systems biology, and synthetic biology. She integrates  empirical into her  philosophical investigations. She has published in numerous journals and has recently co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling (2024) and the collected volume Modeling the Possible (Routledge 2025).

ERC Project - Possible Life: The Philosophical Significance of Extending Biology (LIFEMODE)