He studied his first two years of university studies at the Universidad del Norte in Antofagasta, Chile. Later, thanks to a scholarship from the US government, he continued his studies in that country. In 1968 he received the award for the best Latin American student in the "English as a Second Language" programme at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Williams College, Massachusetts, graduating Cum Laude with Honors in Philosophy (1970). That year he was a recipient of The Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities Award (L.A.S.P.A.U.). In 1974 he received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Later, at the University of Strasbourg, in 1993, he obtained the H.D.R., Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches en Philosophie des Sciences.

Between 1971 and 1974, during his doctoral studies, he taught some courses at Washington University in the United States. Between 1975 and 1981 he worked in Chile. In 1975, Miguel Espinoza was elected by the students as the Best Professor at the Universidad del Norte in Chile. In 1981 he had to leave his native country as a result of his activity against the military dictatorship. From 1981 until his retirement, he was a professor-researcher in France, first at the Universities of Toulouse and Lille, and from 1989 to 2012, at the University of Strasbourg. He has led several seminars on Science and Metaphysics for university professors at the universities where he has worked.

In 2008 he founded in Paris the Philosophy of Nature Circle. It is an interdisciplinary and trilingual society (English, French, Spanish) of more than a hundred professors and researchers from several countries. Its aim is to contribute to the revival of the philosophy of nature. To this end, he organises symposia and seminars, and created and is editor-in-chief of the journal Scripta Philosophiæ Naturalis.

Miguel Espinoza's philosophy of nature is a universal naturalism. Everything that exists is natural, including the human person with the series of strata that constitute it: mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, psychological and socio-cultural. Unlike traditional naturalism, universal naturalism is neither physicalist nor scientistic. It is a realist metaphysics that precedes science, underlies it and extends it. He conceives of nature as a compact network of multiple and varied causes. He named the causal order that determines nature "primordial thought". Accordingly, ideas, principles and thought exist first in things external to the mind and only then, derivatively, in the intellect. His work is essentially centred on the problem of the intelligibility of nature, a subject on which he has published books and essays in French, English and Spanish. His thought emanates from his three scientific-philosophical cultures: Hispanic, Anglo-Saxon and French.

Miguel Espinoza is the author of the following books:

— Dynamics of Multivocal Sentences (1974), Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
— El evento de entender (1978), Dirección de Investigación, Universidad Austral de Chile.
— Análisis de la imaginación (1980), Universidad Austral de Chile.
— Essai sur l'intelligibilité de la nature (1987), Éditions Universitaires du Sud, Toulouse.
— Théorie de l'intelligibilité, 1st. ed. (1994), Éditions Universitaires du Sud, Toulouse, 2nd. ed. (1998), Ellipses, Paris.
— La science : les mathématiques, l'expérience, la logique (1996), Ellipses, Paris.
— Les mathématiques et le monde sensible (1997), Ellipses, Paris.
— Philosophie de la nature (2000), Ellipses, Paris.
— De la science à la philosophie. Hommage à Jean Largeault (2001), L'Harmattan, Paris.
— Pensar la ciencia (with Roberto Torretti), (2004), Tecnos, Madrid.
— Théorie du déterminisme causal (2006), L’Harmattan, Paris.
— Repenser le naturalisme (2014), L'Harmattan, Paris.
— La Matière éternelle et ses harmonies éphémères (2017), L'Harmattan, Paris.
— Pensar la naturaleza. Epistolario filosófico (2020), Uniediciones, Bogotá.
— A Theory of Intelligibility. A Contribution to the Revival of the Philosophy of Nature (2020), Thombooks Press, Toronto, Ontario.
— La Hiérarchie naturelle. Matière, vie, conscience et symbole, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2022.
— Épistémologie contemporaine, Ellipses, Paris, 2023.

He has written several articles for the Encyclopédie Philosophique des P.U.F., Paris, section Logique, Mathématique, Epistémologie et Philosophie des sciences.