Contact
Biography
I'm currently an Associate Professor in Philosophy. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor at Nottingham. Between 2014 and 2016 I was a Post Doctoral Fellow in Classics at Durham University and from 2012 to 2014 I was a post-doc in philosophy at the University of Groningen. The University of Cambridge awarded my PhD in 2012.
I was the REF coordinator for philosophy from 2021-2023.
Expertise Summary
Ancient Philosophy; Ancient Logic.
Teaching Summary
I generally teach second and third year modules on Ancient Greek Philosophy and introductory modules on reasoning, argument, and logic. I'm interested in teaching methods that involve games of… read more
Research Summary
I'm currently funded by a Loeb Classical Library Fellowship from Harvard University to work on a monograph on the Megaric and Dialectical schools, a translation of their sources, as well the… read more
Selected Publications
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2020. Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Sceptics Oxford University Press.
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2020. The Scandal of Deduction and Aristotle’s method for discovering syllogisms Rhizomata. 8(2), 289-311
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2019. Fine-grained and coarse-grained knowledge in Euthydemus 293b7-d1: A response to MMcCabe Australasian Philosophical Review. 3(2),
I generally teach second and third year modules on Ancient Greek Philosophy and introductory modules on reasoning, argument, and logic. I'm interested in teaching methods that involve games of various kinds, and I'm developing a table-top game to help university students in the Humanities and Social Sciences grasp the core concepts of essay writing.
Current Research
I'm currently funded by a Loeb Classical Library Fellowship from Harvard University to work on a monograph on the Megaric and Dialectical schools, a translation of their sources, as well the arguments they presented. These were Socratic thinkers, who apparently influenced Plato, Aristotle and especially Stoic logic, including inventing in the Liar and Sorites paradoxes. But these thinkers are not well understood and I hope to shed light on the philosophical interest of their views, as well as their historical importance.
In 2020 I published a monograph entitled Ancient Relativity: Plato Aristotle, Stoics and Sceptics, with OUP. The book asks at what it is for things to relate to each other. What is it to be larger or smaller, for example? In particular, it looks at ancient views of relativity and how underlying assumptions about relativity affected ancient philosophy. I articulate Plato's ideas about relatives and follow how Aristotle, the Stoics and Sceptics develop these ideas, given their own agendas. I also argue that ancient thinking can help us get clear the phenomenon of relativity more generally.
In 2020, I also published a short book on the phenomenon of relative change in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics with Cambridge University Press for their Elements series.
I still work on relativity, especially ancient relational logic and the idea of 'doubly incomplete' predicates, and how Islamic Philosophers understood relativity. With Dr. Tamer Nawar, I am co-editing a volume entitled Ancient Relativism for Cambridge University Press.
I'm available to supervise research projects involving any aspect of Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Past Research
In 2018-19 I held a Newton Fund Mobility Award, to collaborate with colleagues in Brazil on a project entitled 'Non-contradiction and infinite regress arguments in Plato and Aristotle'. With Luca Pitteloud, I am co-edited a journal issue based on these workshops, showcasing work form young scholars of ancient philosophy working in Brazil, Europe and the UK.
My work in Groningen looked at dialectic in Aristotle's logic as part of a project on the Roots of Deduction.
Future Research
I'm developing a number of projects centered on ancient logic and argument, especially dialectic, modality, future contingents and paradoxes.