Philosophy of Science

I’ve always been interested in philosophy of science, taking a course in undergrad with Jean-Paul Orgeron, a second class in my master’s with Marc Alspector-Kelly, and then a third in my doctoral program with Scott Kleiner. With my research focus on environmental philosophy, I had already taken an interest in philosophy of biology and ecology, so I was excited to teach a course on the subject at Northland College, which focused on the environmental liberal arts. Leaning into the institution and areas I was most comfortable with, I used the first half of the course as a general philosophy of science course, going over classic questions such as the demarcation problem, the realism/anti-realism debate, problem of induction, etc, using Samir Okasha’s Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction to anchor that section as we also engaged with individual articles and book excerpts. The second half of the course used Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Philosophy of Biology to anchor the course, while we also had extended discussion on the species problem, which was of particular interest to me from my work on de-extinction technology.

I hope to be able to teach philosophy of science again in the future. While Northland College’s focus made a special focus on biology appropriate, I’ve grown more interested in the space sciences as I’ve worked on my research program, so I hope to teach a future philosophy of science course with a special focus on those (especially after having recently revisited Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution.