I came to the University to study mathematics, but my family background, actively rooted in the humanities, drew me to philosophy. My particular interest during my studies was on probability theory and logic.

I embarked on my doctoral thesis as part of Professor Jaakko Hintikka’s group, where I adopted the conceptual tools I was to use in my later research. In my thesis I applied Hintikka’s inductive logic to an examination of scientific inference. This resulted in my defence of scientific realism, according to which theories are attempts to represent and explain reality. Nevertheless science too is fallible, so even the best theories can only approximate to truth. In 1975 I came up with a solution to Karl Popper’s problem about how to define truthlikeness in scientific theories, or verisimilitude. This is a subject that has become a lifelong programme of research for me, the technical outcomes of which I have collated in a 500-page monograph, Truthlikeness (1987), and the philosophical conclusions in a work called Critical Scientific Realism (1999).

The problem of realism goes on being one of the great controversies in the philosophy of science, and is connected to my recent work on idealized models and abduction (in other words inference from surprising phenomena to their explanation). The defence of realism is of importance too when we evaluate the trustworthiness of science relative to other systems of belief. Hence the logical and philosophical groundwork in defence of realism also supports a humanist ethic’s place within a scientific world-view, a topic I deal with in my Finnish-language essays. In this way systematic philosophy and participatory philosophy for me constitute a continuum.