Bertrand Russell Professorship of Philosophy

Professor Alexander Bird was elected as Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy in 2020 and currently serves as Chair of the Faculty.

His expertise spans the fields of in the philosophy of science, the philosophy and history of medicine, metaphysics and epistemology. As Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Faculty, he teaches and supervises students while pursuing research and publishing extensively.

Together with Professor Alison Hills, he has published papers challenging the standard view that creativity is defined by producing work that is both novel and valuable. They argue that creativity’s defining feature is that its results arise from imagination.

"Creativity drives progress in the arts and sciences, yet we rarely ask what it truly is. To understand it, we must explore its nature and its limits: where imagination becomes invention, how inspiration emerges and what it really means to create something beautiful, significant and enduring."

Alexander and Alison are co-authoring a book that extends philosophical inquiry into creativity beyond the arts to include science and broader human endeavour. While most philosophical work has focused on artistic expression, their project explores new and enduring questions in the philosophy of creativity, including its links to madness, the possibility of genuine creativity in artificial intelligence, the nature and value of creativity, its relationship to artistic virtue, and the roles of imagination and creativity in both generating and evaluating scientific theories.

The Cambridge Professorship of Philosophy, established in 1896, was renamed the Bertrand Russell Professorship of Philosophy in 2010 following an endowed donation from Cambridge in America and Trinity College. ‍