Welcome
Hello. Saludos. Hejsa. As a philosophy professor, I investigate the philosophical foundations of evolutionary biology and biotechnology. Such foundations need to be placed in their historical, psychological, and sociological contexts. Much to do! And as a citizen, I am obsessed with the promises and dangers of our scientific theories and practices.
1. Education and Appointments? My passion for exploring the relation between science and philosophy, in the context of a variety of scientific cultures, is perhaps reflected in the various contexts in which I have been fortunate enough to study and work:
1. Education and Appointments? My passion for exploring the relation between science and philosophy, in the context of a variety of scientific cultures, is perhaps reflected in the various contexts in which I have been fortunate enough to study and work:
- Graduate studies in philosophy, biology, and history and philosophy of science were done in the Department of Philosophy of Stanford University, and in the Department of Biology and Department of History and Philosophy of Science of Indiana University.
- Assistant Professor (current) in the Department of Philosophy of the University of California, Santa Cruz. I previously worked in the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM in Mexico City.
- Visiting scholar at the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies (CPNSS), physically located at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.
2. Research content? Abstraction and pluralism are the focal concepts of my current research. Below please find some questions addressed in my publications.
+ Abstraction
- What is the relation between the abstract and the concrete? Three abstract-concrete pairs that interest me:
- (a) scientific theory and material reality
- (b) intentional, functional design and applied technology
- (c) cognition and body
- What is pernicious reification? (called "vicious abstractionism" by William James) In particular:
- (a) When and how do we overgeneralize, ontologize, and insist on our abstractions (e.g., evolutionary theories and models; theories of "race", cognition, and IQ)?
- (c) How can we pull together abstractions into a powerful integration network, thereby avoiding pernicious reification?
+ Pluralism
- Which sorts of units of scientific research exist in a plurality of ways? Examples:
- (b) disciplines
- (d) micro-research groups (e.g., "the Wade lab")
3. Current project? A book on reification in science. Tentative title?
When a Map Becomes the World:
Abstraction, Reification, and Communal Wisdom in Science
[Book synopsis available upon request.]
4. Future projects?
- Critical Genomics of "race" (Wir sind alle Afrikaner) and intelligence (plurality of intelligences)
- Assumption Archeology of biomedical ontologies
- revised evolutionary theory as a source of normativity for biotechnologies
- pragmatic and normative aspects of mathematical models (especially in genomics and climate studies)
- visual and narrative models in science
- prediction and hypothesis testing (frequentist & Bayesian) as empirical methodologies
- the nature of distinctions, classifications, and kind-making
- the metaphysics of networks
- the realism-constructivism debate as it gets played out in Darwinism, and in biotechnology
5. Other intellectual interests? Physics, psychology, literature and poetry, art, architecture, and the study of multiculturalism.
6. Languages? I speak English, Danish, 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.
The Quote Bestiary
"Hypostatic abstraction [is] the chief engine of mathematical thought."
(C. S. Peirce, ca. 1901, Collected Papers 2.364)
"All reification is a forgetting."
(Letter from T. Adorno to W. Benjamin, Feb. 29, 1940; also in M. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment)
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."
(A. Einstein and L. Infeld, 1938, The Evolution of Physics)
"The problem for science is to understand the proper domain of explanation of each abstraction rather than become its prisoner."
(R. Levins and R. Lewontin, 2006, The Dialectical Biologist)
"Hypostatic abstraction [is] the chief engine of mathematical thought."
(C. S. Peirce, ca. 1901, Collected Papers 2.364)
"All reification is a forgetting."
(Letter from T. Adorno to W. Benjamin, Feb. 29, 1940; also in M. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment)
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."
(A. Einstein and L. Infeld, 1938, The Evolution of Physics)
"The problem for science is to understand the proper domain of explanation of each abstraction rather than become its prisoner."
(R. Levins and R. Lewontin, 2006, The Dialectical Biologist)
The blind men and the elephant. How can we overcome reifying six partial perspectives?
