This wiki provides an unranked list of Ph.D. and terminal M.A. programs that have strengths in philosophy of biology. Since it's a wiki, you can edit it, so please do. The primary intended audience is prospective and current graduate students with interests in philosophy of biology who want to get the lay of the land by seeing who works where and on what. All content on this site is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Find us on Facebook.
Download the PDF: The entire list of Ph.D. and M.A. programs can be downloaded.
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M.A. Programs
California State University Long Beach
- Alex Klein // website 1, PhilPapers
- Specialties: Pragmatism (esp. William James), Philosophy of Biology, History and Philosophy of Psychology, Logical Positivism, History of Science
- Ph.D. 2007 Indiana University HPS
- Cory Wright // website PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of Science, Semantics (esp. Truth), History and Philosophy of Psychology, Philosophy of Neuroscience
- Ph.D. 2007 UC San Diego (Philosophy & Cognitive Science)
- Wayne Wright // website 1
- Specialties: Vision Science (esp. Color Perception), Modeling, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science
- Ph.D. 1999 Temple University
Concordia University, Montreal
- Matthew Barker | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of biology, value theory, philosophy of psychology, general philosophy of science, and 17th and 18th century philosophy
- Ph.D. 2010 University of Wisconsin-Madison
- - Thesis: The philosophy of species : conceptual, metaphysical, and ethical insights concerning biological species
- - Advisor: Elliott Sober
- David Morris | Website | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Phenomenology (esp. Merleau-Ponty) with a focus on the philosophy of the body, mind and nature in relation to current biology and cognitive science (via website)
- Ph.D. 1997 University of Toronto
Louisiana State University
Department Website | Entry in APA Guide
- Charles H. Pence | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: History and philosophy of biology, foundations of evolutionary theory, chance and evolution, fitness, causation (via website)
- Willing to work with new students? Yes
- Ph.D. 2014 University of Notre Dame
- - Thesis: Chance in evolutionary theory: fitness, selection, and genetic drift in philosophical and historical perspective
- - Advisor: Grant Ramsey
Oregon State University
- Jonathan Kaplan | Website | 2 | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy (via website)
- Ph.D. 1996 Stanford University
- - Thesis: Networks of support politics and genes in contemporary society
- - Advisor: John Dupre
Tufts University
Department Website | Entry in APA Guide
- Patrick Forber | Website | 2 | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Confirmation, explanation, and idealization in science, especially in evolutionary biology and ecology (via website)
- Ph.D. 2006 Stanford University
- - Thesis: The traces of change: evidence in evolutionary biology
- - Advisor: Elliott Sober
University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Ethics & Applied Philosophy)
Department Website | Entry in APA Guide
- Trevor Pearce | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: History and philosophy of biology, focusing on how research in experimental biology, ecology, and paleobiology, suitably understood, can help answer broader questions about the relative importance of different causal factors in evolutionary history (via website)
- Ph.D. 2010 University of Chicago (Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science)
- - Thesis: "A perfect chaos": Organism-environment interaction and the causal factors of evolution
- - Advisors: William Wimsatt and Robert J. Richards
University of Victoria
- Jacob Stegenga | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of science, in particular: methodology of medical research, philosophy of biology, and foundational topics in theoretical and practical reasoning
- Ph.D. 2011 UC San Diego
- - Thesis: Multimodal evidence
- - Advisor: Nancy Cartwright
- Scott Woodcock | Website | CV |
- Specialties: Explanations for altruism, levels of selection, and ethics and naturalism
- , Ph.D. 2001 University of Toronto
- - Thesis: The genealogy of moral memes: a new synthesis for evolutionary ethics
- - Advisor: Paul Thompson
Virginia Tech
Department Website | | Entry in APA Guide
- Benjamin Jantzen | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Physics, General Philosophy of Science, Biophysics
- Willing to work with new students? Yes
- Ph.D. 2010 Carnegie Mellon University (Logic, Computation, and Methodology)
- - Advisor: Mara Harrell
- Richard M. Burian | Website | CV | PhilPapers
- Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, History of Philosophy of Biology, History of Philosophy of Science, Science Studies
- Willing to work with new students? Possibly; write to ask.
- Ph.D. 1971 University of Pittsburgh
- - Thesis: Scientific realism, commensurability, and conceptual change: a critique of Paul Feyerabend's philosophy of science
- - Advisor: Wilfrid Sellars
Browse Programs by Category
Below are two ways to browse programs by category. The first sorts all programs by number of philosophy of biology faculty. The second sorts U.S. programs by state.
You can find a listing of Australasian and Canadian programs by specialty on this page. Once that list includes programs from other parts of the world, they will be incorporated. As always, prospective students should fact-check the faculty numbers listed because academics change jobs frequently. (Note: 'P' stands for Page.)
| All Ph.D. Programs by Number of Faculty |
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| U.S. Ph.D. Programs by State |
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How to Contribute
This is a wiki, so anyone can contribute. No account is needed—though you are encouraged to create one—and all changes can be rolled back, so edit with a free hand.
Making Edits
You can make edits in one of two ways: by clicking 'Edit', which enables WYSIWYG (or visual) editing, ala a wordprocessor. Alternately, you can click 'Edit source', which allows you to edit the wiki markup in plaintext. Use whichever method you prefer. It takes a little longer to open the editing window in visual mode because the server has to translate wiki markup to html on the fly. So be patient. If things are too sluggish, you can switch over to 'Edit source'.
Wiki formatting/markup is very straightforward, and all you need to do is mimic the current entries since formatting is standardized.
If programs or faculty have been overlooked—which is assuredly the case—you are encouraged to add them, even if you are not a member of that department. Also, information will date rapidly, so by all means help keep things up to date.
Additional Program Information
Every program listed also has a separate page where additional information can be provided to prospective students. While the style and format of this main page should be kept consistent, individual pages can take any form whatsoever. To edit one of these pages, simply follow the link entitled 'Additional Program Information' underneath the department listing of interest and edit that page.
The following programs have added considerably to their pages. Feel free to mimic them.