James Ladyman is a British philosopher of science at the University of Bristol, best known for co-developing ontic structural realism (OSR) with Don Ross in their landmark work Every Thing Must Go (2007). He argues that structure, rather than individual objects or substances, is the fundamental ontological category revealed by modern physics. Ladyman is a leading advocate for naturalized metaphysics, insisting that speculative metaphysics be replaced by philosophical inquiry continuous with and constrained by the natural sciences.
Co-developed Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) as a response to the pessimistic meta-induction against scientific realism
Co-authored Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalised (2007) with Don Ross, a foundational text in naturalized metaphysics
Argued that individual objects should be eliminated in favor of irreducible structural relations in fundamental physics
Advanced a systematic critique of analytic metaphysics as insufficiently constrained by scientific evidence
Contributed to debates on the metaphysics of identity, individuality, and quantum mechanics