About Me


I am a logician and a philosopher of science.
I am currently teaching mathematics at a college for accounting and occasionally logic at the University of Vienna.
I recieved my Ph.D. in logic from the University of Leeds under the supervision of Prof. Michael Rathjen.
I am also doing a second Ph.D. at the University of Vienna supervised by Prof. Richard Heinrich about Marsilio Ficino.
(Not uninteresting for philosophy of science:) My grounding in chemistry and my practical insights into the working life in a lab come from my training as a chemist at the very unique HTL Rosensteingasse.

I can be reached at: michael (dot) toppel (at) bildung (dot) gv (dot) at

Research Interests

  • the Ramsey-Carnap approach to scientific theories
  • natural philosophy and magic in the Long Middle Ages
  • medieval logical theories (John Buridan)
  • the philosophy of formal systems and logic
  • ordinal analysis and inter-theoretic reduction

Publications


Applying Ramseyfication to Infrared Spectroscopy


Michael Toppel

Erkenntnis, Volume 88, 2023, pp. 3357–3373


Buridan’s Secular Demarcation of Logic


M. Toppel, E. Ramharter

Philosophia, 1267–1288, 2021


On Relating Theories: Proof-Theoretical Reduction


M. Toppel, M. Rathjen

Springer, Mathesis Universalis, Computability and Proof, 2019, pp. 311-331

Academic Texts

  • MA-Thesis (in Philosophy): A Solution to the Application Problem of Mathematics by Ramseyfication.
    University of Vienna (2020)
    Supervisor: Georg Schiemer
    There is a respond to Otsuka's book (2019) included.

  • PhD-Thesis (in Mathematics): Complexities of Proof-Theoretical Reductions.
    University of Leeds (2016)
    Supervisor: Michael Rathjen

  • MSc-Thesis (in Mathematics): Syntactical Consistency Proofs for Term Induction Revisited.
    University of Vienna (2011)
    Supervisor: Jakob Kellner, Matthias Baaz

Posts


Jan 13, 2024

The case of David Wolpe – a missed opportunity for the official Pagan community

On December 25 (2023) the Rabbi David Wolpe published the article “The Return of the Pagans” in The Atlantic. He defined Paganism as “the worship of natural forces ... [in] two forms: the deification of nature and the deification of force.” He identifi...


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Dec 20, 2023

My reaction to an internal conflict in the German GWUP concerning Matauranga Maori


Apr 19, 2023

A Reaction to "Atheistisch glauben" by Hartmut von Sass

In his new book "Atheistisch glauben" (believing atheistically) the theologian Hartmut von Sass describes how one can stay by the Christian faith without holding a theistic stance. I react to this as a pagan Atheist and member of the Austrain Atheistic...


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Mar 13, 2023

The 2023 evaluation of the math curriculum in Austria

The reevaluation of high school curricula for Austrian schools occurs every ten years. This decade's evaluation is happening 2023. My advisory opinion as a logician and teacher (on my own initiative) can be found here.


May 31, 2022

My Paganism - positive account

This is the positive account to Paganism and my religiosity, which is missing in the previous part from 2020. These two parts are logically unrelated, which means that should my positive account lack persuasive power to the reader or to my future self,...


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