Haktan Akcin

My research lies at the intersection of philosophy of science and metaphysics, with particular interests in scientific theory change, structural realism, metaphysical modality, and naturalized metaphysics. My doctoral work addresses a tension between naturalized metaphysics and the pessimistic meta-induction: if metaphysical inquiry takes its lead from our best scientific theories, how should it accommodate the fact that even successful theories and their ontologies are subject to substantial change? I develop a structural realist response, focusing on structural continuity across theory change and exploring the modal character of retained structures as a basis for a historically informed naturalized metaphysics.

I continue to work on these problems while also extending my research on scientific theory change into the historical sciences, particularly archaeology. A developing strand of this work examines how the ongoing Taş Tepeler (Stone Hills) Project in southeastern Anatolia, including Göbekli Tepe and nearby Neolithic sites, is reshaping our understanding of Neolithisation. More specifically, evidence for increasingly sedentary hunter-gatherer communities in the Taş Tepeler region complicates earlier understandings of Neolithisation, particularly the close association between the emergence of agriculture and settled life, represented especially clearly by Çatalhöyük, a major early Neolithic settlement in central Anatolia. More broadly, these developments raise further questions about the relationship between subsistence, settlement, monumentality, and social organisation, and about which elements of earlier accounts of Neolithisation should be retained, revised, or abandoned.