Richard A. Richards

My research focuses on two main areas: the history and philosophy of biology, and aesthetics (the philosophy of art). The philosophical issues raised by biological classification have been treated in two books: The Species Problem (2010) and Biological Classification (2016), both with Cambridge University Press. Darwin has also been an interest of mine, and I have written on how domestic breeding functions in his argument, the role of experiment in his thinking, and his views about classification and sexual selection. I have also adopted a type of "naturalism" that is based on our best scientific understanding of the world. My naturalism begins with evolutionary thinking and what it can tell us about traditional philosophical topics, including some related to ethics and aesthetics. In the spirit of this naturalism is my forthcoming book, The Biology of Art, Cambridge University Press, which examines evolutionary accounts of the arts, the psychological and neurophysiological study of art experience and behavior, as well as the ecological study of art, based on the idea that to understand our art behaviors we need to understand how our engineered art niches function in our art behaviors.