athamosstradis

ATHAMOS STRADIS

ART / PHILOSOPHY BRIGHTON / COLOGNE

Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, University of Cologne (from March 2026).

Artist producing illustrations for Philosophy Now magazine since 2011.

Formerly a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, where PhD was completed under the supervision of David Papineau in 2021.

Primary research interests are time-asymmetry, causation, and the foundations of statistical mechanics, and more broadly philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

TEACHING

Graduate Teaching Assistant
King’s College London
Philosophy of Physics I: Space and Time

Ethics I

Introduction to Philosophy (Logic Element)

Introduction to Philosophy (Ethics Element)

Modern Philosophy I: Hume and Descartes

2018-20

2017-19

2018-19

2017-18

2016-17

Click here for full CV.

CONTACT

athamos.stradis@kcl.ac.uk

Universität zu Köln
Philosophisches Seminar
Albertus Magnus Platz
50923 Köln
Germany

RESEARCH

Current Project

The Tapestry of Time’s Arrows

This project explores how three central themes - causation, macrostates, and time’s apparent passage - relate to the Second Law and the universe’s initial conditions.

Publications

Global and Local Imperialism in Statistical Mechanics
Erkenntnis 91: 311-323 (2026)
Sceptics of the Mentaculus worry that statistical mechanics, when applied to the whole universe, transcends the theory’s thermodynamic evidence base. But the theory has the same ‘imperialistic’ tendencies even in ordinary, local applications. If we tolerate them here, we should do likewise in the Mentaculus, and embrace the theory’s inevitable bycatch.

Present Records of the Past Hypothesis
Synthese 203: 214 (2024)
The Mentaculus harbours an asymmetry of records. David Albert and Barry Loewer explain this localised asymmetry by appealing to the Mentaculus’ global probabilistic structure. I argue that this is circular, and by enlisting the fork asymmetry as an analysis of records, I reverse the explanatory order.

Backward Causation: Harder than it Looks
Philosophy of Science 90 (1): 77-91 (2023)
A salient Lewisian theory of causation based on statistical mechanics is thought to allow special scenarios involving backward causation. However, the underlying logic implies this phenomenon isn’t rare, but rife. I show how this implication can be blocked, and deflate a related objection about our ability to control the past.

Memory, the Fork Asymmetry and the Initial State
Synthese 199: 9523-9547 (2021)
In this paper I argue that the low-entropy character of the Past Hypothesis falls short of explaining the record asymmetry. Nevertheless, the fork asymmetry - itself a consequence of the initial probability distribution - can plug the explanatory gap, and do real justice to the informativeness of individual records.

Last Updated: 10.01.2026