Armstrong, David Malet (1926–2014)

David Armstrong was born in Melbourne, and studied philosophy at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford. He returned to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne and later moved to the chair at Sydney. He has made many major contributions to central topics in epistemology and metaphysics, including perception, laws, universals, the mind, belief and knowledge, and possibility. His overall programme has been the articulation of a naturalistic metaphysics, understood as the doctrine that nothing at all exists except the single world of space and time.

A notable feature of his work in these contentious areas has been its directness and clarity, and the central importance he attaches to squaring what the philosopher says with what science, especially physical science, teaches us. In both these respects he is like another important Australian philosopher, J.J.C. Smart, and together they have influenced the way a generation of philosophers in Australia do philosophy, as well as influencing the doctrines they espouse.