WELCOME
What is the historical and ethical context of evolutionary and psychological theories, and how are these theories used, perhaps sometimes illegitimately, to draw conclusions about race, sex/gender, and intelligence? How do complex models of cognition and climate change influence technology, and how is that technology used? When do we conflate and confuse our theoretical maps with the world? As a philosophy professor, I investigate the structure, dynamics, and functions of scientific theories and models. In a nutshell, I worry about how and when we use abstractions generatively, and how and when we perniciously reify them. I have lectured and published on a wide variety of topics in philosophy as well as on science more generally.
Here are my areas of interest: philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, evolutionary theory, genetics, cartography, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, mathematics, cosmology, social and human sciences, Pragmatism, History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), Kant, post-structuralism, Latin American Philosophy.
1. Education and Appointments?
- Education
- Stanford University: Department of Philosophy (B.A., Masters)
- Indiana University: Department of Biology (Masters); Department of History and Philosophy of Science (PhD); Department of Mathematics (Minor)
- Appointments
- University of California, Santa Cruz: Associate Professor (2013 - Current), Assistant Professor (2007-2013); Department of Philosophy
- Niels Bohr Institute: Guest Researcher (2009-2011); Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies; Center for Models of Life
- UNAM, Mexico City: Assistant Professor (2004-2007), Post-Doc (2003-2004); Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas
- Stanford University: Visiting Scholar (2015-2016); Department of Philosophy
2. Professional Service?
- "History and Philosophy of Biology" Series Editor, Routledge
- "Genomics and Philosophy of Race: Philosophy in a Multicultural Context" Research Cluster (UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, University of San Francisco), Principal Investigator (No longer active.)
- Reviewer for 25+ journals, publishers, and funding agencies
3. General research content?
- Abstraction-Reification
- What is the relation between the concrete (e.g., reality, material technology, and the body) and the abstract (e.g., theory, functional design, and consciousness)?
- When and how do we universalize, narrow, and ontologize our scientific abstraction? (William James called this "vicious abstractionism")
- Pluralism
- Which categories of scientific research exist in a plurality of ways?
- (c) micro-research groups (e.g., "the Wade lab")
4. Current specific projects?
+Pragmatic aspects of models and modeling:
- (i) mathematical models (especially in genomics, climate studies, and physics)
- (ii) diagrammatic models (especially of biological mechanisms, and "Tree of life" vs. "Network of life")
- (iii) narrative models (especially in Evo-Devo)
+ Assumption Archaeology of the practices, theories, and ontologies of these fields:
- (i) the genomics of "race" (Wir sind alle Afrikaner)
- (ii) network science
- (iii) consciousness studies
+ Prediction and hypothesis testing (frequentist & Bayesian) as stringent and probative empirical methodologies
5. Other intellectual interests? Physics, psychology, literature and poetry, art, architecture, and the study of multiculturalism.
6. Languages? I speak Danish, English, and Spanish. Perhaps one day my French, German, and Latin will improve.
Check out the rest of my webpage, if you are interested. Please send me your feedback.
Neues Museum, Berlin, 2010.
Photo courtesy of
Ola Jakup Joensen, Niels Bohr Institute
UPCOMING TALKS AND CONFERENCES
2016
Upcoming:
September 12, 2016 @ 10.00 hrs.
School of Architecture and Design; Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; bygn. 68, rum C.426
Conference on Gaia and Earth System Science
March 25
Panthéon-Sorbonne University,
Paris
April 21, 4:30 pm, History Bldg rm 307,
Program in History and Philosophy of Science,
Stanford University
"Mechanism Marries Mathematics"
Symposium on
Integrating Explanatory Strategies Across the Life Sciences
November 3-6
Philosophy of Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia
TBD
Conference on Representing scientific results: Forms of knowledge
November 18-19
University of Kassel,
Germany
Conference on
Scientific Diagrams
November 24-25
National Tsing Hua University,
Hsinchu City, Taiwan
2015
Aarhus University
May 27, 3.20-4:35 pm
Keynote for MA Student Conference
Bldg. 1455, rm. 127
(When Maps Become the World
Copenhagen
June 2
2013
Organizer
Stanford, CA
SHORT ESSAYS
Deductive vs.
synthetic styles of thinking, in science and in everyday life.
On the nature and purposes of making distinctions
RASMUS GRØNFELDT WINTHER
(University of Chicago Press, book under contract).
Comments Welcome.
Comments Welcome.
New Project:
LOST MAPS
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