Roman

Editor-in-Chief

Contact: roman.melnikov@warwick.ac.uk

I am a finalist of Philosophy, it is quite a thrilling story to how this came to be. I first showed my interest in, and developed an obsession with, physics when I was juvenile. The reason being, I wished to understand the world; physics seemed the strongest candidate to do so, in my seven-year-old wisdom. I became terribly frustrated with physics later in my studies because I realised physics did not answer my questions about the nature of the world and why it was so, instead it only casually described how to model nature from empirical observation. I abandoned physics for its grandfather: the discipline of mathematics. In mathematics I felt far more at home- it did not concern itself with modeling anything external to itself, and sought to answer questions of a far more pure nature. Still, I found as I approached the higher studies of mathematics a shocking ghost of alienation manifested to me. Higher mathematics answered questions that were sporadic- scattered in different fields of itself. Moreover, often answering questions which have pragmatic use to mathematicians, rather than actually describing the reality of what the question poses, and what its answer entails. I finally had the epiphany- to answer the questions of how and why in one unified manner, and with a principled purpose, one must turn to philosophy. My position as Editor-in-Chief of Pharos is just part of this journey- to understand and help others understand the world.        

My interests in philosophy include metaphysics and ontology, logic, political philosophy, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of semantics. My most favourite philosopher, an intellectual-brother, remains G.W.F. Hegel. Naturally, I am also drawn to B. Spinoza, K. Marx, and G. Deleuze. I also hold that figures like K. Godel and G. Cantor were philosophical titans who improved humankind’s understanding of not only mathematics, but also the nature of infinity and thought.