“Past and failed innovations tell us as much about innovation as contemporary successful ones”

Krist Vaesen is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Innovation, at the department Philosophy & Ethics, and founding member of the Eindhoven Meta-Science Center (META/e). Krist has worked on a wide range of topics, including technological normativity, the extended mind hypothesis, the epistemology of cognitive artifacts, the cognitive bases of tool use, theories of cultural and technological evolution, foundational issues in human origins research, the philosophy of scientific models (e.g., models of innovation), and the history of 20th Century Anglo-American philosophy. Currently, he devotes almost all of his research time on meta-scientific questions, and has published on, among other things, science funding, the perks and perils of inter-disciplinary research, the causes and cures of PhD attrition, academic research values, scientific coordination, and research integrity. Krist is preparing a book about the replication and other crises in science, tentatively entitled "Neophilia--why our obsession with innovation leads to bad science".

Krist Vaesen studied applied biology (1998) and philosophy (2003) at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He obtained his doctoral degree from TU/e (2008) with a philosophical essay on artifacts and norms. He was a post-doctoral researcher in the NWO-program “Things that make us smart: cognitive artifacts and extended minds” (2008-2012), and was awarded an excellence grant from TU/e’s Executive Board for his work on this program. In 2012, he became an assistant professor in philosophy at TU/e. He obtained a Vidi-grant in 2014 for the program “Darwinizing culture: the status of cultural evolutionary theory as a science” (2014-2019). Since 2015, he has been a research fellow at the Human Origins Group, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. In 2018, he became an elected member of the Eindhoven Young Academy of Engineering.

He has published in prominent general science journals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, PLoS ONE), biology journals (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B), anthropology journals (Evolutionary Anthropology, Current Anthropology), and philosophy journals (Biology & Philosophy, Philosophy of Science). His research has been covered by various national and international media outlets (Times Higher Education, Volkskrant, Radio 1/VPRO, BNR News Radio, Royal Society’s Chemistry World).