Brian David Ellis (27 September 1929—21 November 2025) was a paradigmatically philosophical thinker. His thoughts instinctively ran straight to the deepest presuppositions in any given area of study. The academic discipline of Philosophy in Australia experienced a remarkable vibrancy and international influence throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and Ellis was part of that. He was one of the key figures who developed influential brands of so-called ‘scientific realism’ and ‘scientific essentialism’ that were for several decades based largely in Australia.
Brian Ellis was born and educated in Adelaide. He came from a non-academic background and went to a technical school; but he achieved exceptionally impressive results in science, and this took him to study physics at the University of Adelaide. There he again achieved outstanding results, and he graduated with BSc (1950), BSc (Hons) (1951), BA (Hons) (1953). His philosophical bent drew him to philosophy, and this was the beginning of a lasting influence from the internationally prominent exponent of scientific realism, J.J.C. Smart, who was then at Adelaide. In 1953 he was one of a handful of exceptional students across Australia and New Zealand who were awarded a free return passage, first-class, to the United Kingdom under an Australia and New Zealand passenger conference scheme for assisting University graduates to go abroad for further study. He studied at the University of Oxford (at the same time as Bob Hawke); he was tutored by H.H. Price, completed a BPhil, and he was awarded a DLitt. While still a student, he won an annual essay prize set by the prominent academic philosophy journal Analysis. The topic that year was set by the leading Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin (the topic was ‘What sort of “if” is the “if” in “I can if I choose”?’). Ellis found it amusing that his first publication was in a kind of ‘Oxford ordinary language philosophy’ that he saw as deeply opposed in spirit to the kind of scientific realism that he supported throughout his career. He then returned to Australia by ship early in 1965 to take up a lectureship in the Department of History and Methods of Science at the University of Melbourne (later to become the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science).
On board the ship returning to Australia, Brian met Jennifer Ball; they married soon after, and they remained married for the rest of his life. This drew Brian into the heart of an intellectual aristocracy that was closely associated with Eltham, one of the suburbs of Melbourne, a social nexus of writers, painters, architects, filmmakers, musicians, political activists, philosophers, and so on. The philosopher David Armstrong was loosely associated for a time; and Brian and Jenny Ellis had occasion to supply Peter Singer with ethical home-grown eggs. This microcosm was analogous to the so-called Bloomsbury group in twentieth-century England—a group which included both significant artists and intellectuals like J.M. Keynes and Bertrand Russell, who were influential in post-war international developments, including for instance the establishment of the United Nations and the National Health system in England—and Australians had similar ambitions on the world stage. From a distance, Eltham was just one small example of many loosely bohemian enclaves around the world, but it was larger than life for the people in its midst. At the University of Melbourne at that time, Professor William Macmahon Ball was a significant figure in Politics and, when Russell visited Melbourne University, he visited Ball at his home in Eltham. The nature of the intellectual community in which Brian Ellis lived is vividly illustrated by the fact that Brian’s wife had met Russell because her father and Russell had interlocking political interests. It is no accident that Brian Ellis’s philosophical career, from metaphysics to ethics, reflects many aspects of the intellectual world that he entered through his marriage to Jennifer Ball.
Ellis began as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in 1956, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1961 and Reader in 1965; and from there, he was appointed in 1966 as Foundation Professor in Philosophy at the nearby newly-established La Trobe University. In 1972 he was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He remained as Professor at La Trobe University until retirement in 1994, when he became Professor Emeritus at La Trobe and took a position as Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
As Professor at La Trobe University, Ellis helped to establish one of the largest Philosophy Departments anywhere in the English-speaking world at the time, with as many as thirty or more full-time teaching and research staff, all working on the same campus, coming in to work every day, and sharing the same common room. Among other things, he brought the History and Philosophy of Science from Melbourne to La Trobe (and from there, Robert Pargetter took HPS to Monash). During his time, there were widespread moves to reform university administration and make it more democratic; and at La Trobe Ellis did not use his powers to resist but strongly supported initiatives in this direction. Not all the democratic ideals have survived in the long term; but universities are very different now from what they were before his time. During this period Ellis was also Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Under his guidance this journal went from strength to strength, and the journal came to rank within the top 10 academic philosophy journals anywhere in the world. His overflowing enthusiasm for philosophy, and his hard work, both in teaching and in publishing his research, was contagious. Several of his publications were jointly written with colleagues in the department and boosted their careers. His most cited books were Basic Concepts of Measurement (1966) and Scientific Essentialism (2001). He was gregarious and the exceptional hospitality of both Brian and his wife Jenny were deeply appreciated—this, too, created a positive tone that amplified productivity of everyone involved in the department.
The impact of Brian Ellis is not to be measured by the influence of his publications alone; nevertheless, his research contribution does merit special mention. The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume famously cast doubt on the existence of any ‘necessary connexions’ in nature. This was an encapsulation of a pervasive ‘mechanization’ of the scientific world picture and a rejection of Aristotelian notions that science required us to uncover the essential properties of things in the world, their ‘natures,’ their ‘powers’ and ‘potentialities.’ In the philosophical circles in which Ellis worked, a firm Humean rejection of these Aristotelian notions was dominant in the discipline. The dominant view, which Ellis reacted against, was, in a nutshell, Hume’s view that ‘all things are loose and separate’ and that the world just consists of ‘one little thing and then another’—which we should try to describe as concisely as we can, while tying all our words as tightly as we can to empirical observations. Ellis was one of a handful of early midwives to the rebirth of key elements in a much more Aristotelian understanding of science. This movement has become even stronger and more widespread over the last two decades; but Ellis was there in the early years when it was consigned to the margins by mainstream philosophers. In his writings and conversation, however, the idea that we were recovering insights from past philosophers, or from common sense, never came up; he was brimming with the excitement of original discovery. One way in which Ellis energized his department was by conveying a boundless enjoyment in the process of doing philosophy; another was through an unshakeable confidence in the historical importance of what we were doing.
In addition to a denial of necessary connections in nature, Hume was also famous for preaching that there is a deep difference between Facts and Values, and for maintaining that ‘you can never validly infer an ought from an is.’ This entailed that ethical and political conclusions cannot be drawn from advances in science. The department that Ellis helped create at La Trobe fitted a pattern that was then common in Australia—with two professors: one for ‘Facts’ (epistemology, metaphysics, logic, philosophy of science) and one for ‘Values’ (moral and political philosophy). Ellis said that during his time at La Trobe he refrained from publishing outside his own domain; but after he retired, he began to publish books on political issues—like the rise of ‘economic rationalism,’ the gradual dismantling of the ‘welfare state,’ the UN charter of ‘human rights,’ and so on. He argued for what might be called a ‘social contract rule utilitarianism.’ Smart and Singer were ‘act utilitarians’ (‘choose each act to optimize outcomes’); Ellis was a ‘rule utilitarian’ (‘follow a general rule that has socially beneficial outcomes’). His fundamental ethical concerns were still detectable even during the dark times of the COVID epidemic, when he was hospitalized after a devastating stroke. The very little that remained of his philosophical capacities turned fleetingly, but repeatedly, to the notion of a national scheme to ensure that people in his situation could rely on the ethically fundamental pleasure of delicious meals.
Between his retirement from La Trobe in 1994 and his devastating stroke in 2021, Ellis not only wrote continually, book after book, but was also philosophically active in many other ways. He took an active role in establishing an Eltham branch of the University of the Third Age, and several of his books were workshopped in courses he taught in the thriving U3A community that he had helped to establish. He was also active in a regular Philosophy Group in Eltham, and in a regular ‘discussion and dinner’ group (‘the 20 Club’) based at the University of Melbourne; and he was an active member of the Rationalist Society of Australia. Throughout his life he was politically involved—first with the Australian Labor Party, then for a time with the Democrats (where his wife Jenny was active), then back to the Labor Party again. He was active also with an extended family, children and grandchildren all living in Melbourne, house and garden (he was much more practically competent than many academics) … it was a large and full life. He is remembered with affection, gratitude, and respect.
Vale Brian Ellis.
Emeritus Professor John Bigelow FAHA
Monash University
