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Instruments of Unity: the Many Ways of Being One is an EPSRC Research Grant, from the Frontier Research Guarantee with funding of £1.4M. The grant funds a five-year research project from January 2024 through January 2029, employing three postdocs and including a 3.5 year PhD studentship, led by PI Aaron J. Cotnoir.

How do many things come together into single unified entity? What is it to be whole? How is a group united? How do we carve the world into its most natural units? We perceive unities everywhere: from ant colonies to cellular automata, from organisms to organisations. Yet we have little understanding about the general constraints by which they unified. The Instruments of Unity Project tackles this abstract question in a way that provides concrete applicable answers. The core hypothesis: unity is a complex pluralistic phenomenon, requiring a multifaceted theoretical approach. We identify unity relations across a variety of formal settings, using tools from part/whole theory, theories of location, qualitative dimensions, modal logics, graph theory, weighted networks, topology, mathematical morphology, and more. In sum: there are many ways to be one.

 The project goals include: pioneering novel formal paradigms for unity; developing a measurement-theoretic ‘Guide for Naturalness’; applying the framework to problems in metaphysics, including social and formal ontologies; and even addressing the ‘meta’-question of whether there’s any unity to the different types of unity. Along the way, we will rehabilitate a more holistic ‘carving’-based metaphysics over against the dominant reductionistic ‘building’-based paradigm.

 Using the proven method of expert-led collaborative research, and advised by a Board of researchers from Europe and the US, the project progresses over three phases in five years. The team (composed of the PI, three postdocs, and a fully-funded PhD student) will deliver: over twenty articles in top journals, a research monograph, an open-access PhD thesis, a small workshop, a major conference, an annotated open-source bibliography, a downloadable reference database, and shareable infographics to facilitate accessible knowledge exchange to non-experts.

Principal Investigator: Aaron Cotnoir

Research students: Giulia Schirripa, Andrea Oliani, Francisca Silva, Sabina Dominguez Parrado, Luca Alberto Rappuoli

Associated news

Publication: Aybüke Özgün and Aaron Cotnoir

PhD Studentship — Instruments of Unity: The Many Ways of Being One

Publication: Aaron Cotnoir

Research Grant Success: Dr Aaron Cotnoir