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Philosophy of Biology Graduate Programs

This wiki provides an unranked list of Ph.D. and terminal M.A. programs that have strengths in philosophy of biology. Links are provided to the websites, CVs, and PhilPapers profiles of the relevant faculty at each program. Additionally, when known, the specialties and willingness of faculty members to work with new graduate students are noted. The primary intended audience is prospective or 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.

Please note: If you want to create your own philosophy wiki, visit PhilWiki.net, which offers free setup, free hosting, and a free, i.e., Creative Commons, template. Shawn Standefer has used these resources to create the Philosophical Logic PhD Programs wiki and others are forthcoming.

Contents

Note to Prospective Graduate Students

The purpose of this wiki is to aid your search for philosophy of biology graduate programs that suit your tastes. It does so in two ways:

  • By listing as many philosophy of biology graduate programs as possible.
  • By making research into those programs more efficient and convenient by identifying the relevant philosophy of biology faculty and providing easy access to their bios, research interests, CVs, partial publication lists, etc.

However, while this site may be where your research into programs starts, it decidedly should not be where it ends. You need to dig around and do your due diligence—e.g., contact people within the programs[1]—in order to put yourself in the best possible position to make an informed decision about where to apply. Best of luck!

Standards, Practices, and Guidelines

Short Version

  1. The criterion for program inclusion is just that a philosophy (or HPS) program have at least one full-time faculty member who self-identifies as a philosopher of biology.
  2. The standard of evidence required to make the list is an official (or personal) university-affiliated website—or a publicly-accessible CV—that lists philosophy of biology as a primary research interest.
  3. Philosophers who have made contributions to the philosophy of biology but who do not list phil bio as an AOS/AOC are usually not listed.
  4. Affiliated, part-time, and emeritus faculty who work closely with graduate students should be labelled as such inside parentheses next to their names.
  5. Bioethics, environmental ethics, philosophy of neuroscience/cognitive science, philosophy of medicine, and history of biology—in and of themselves—are not counted as philosophy of biology.

Longer Version

  1. The criterion for program inclusion is just that a philosophy (or a history and philosophy of science) Ph.D. program have at least one full-time faculty member who self-identifies as a philosopher of biology.[2] Programs do not have to be in English-speaking departments. A separate list of M.A. programs can be found at the bottom of this page.
  2. The standard of evidence required to make the list is an official (or personal) university-affiliated website—or a publicly-accessible CV—that lists philosophy of biology as a primary research interest.
  3. Philosophers who have made contributions to the philosophy of biology but who do not list phil bio as an AOS/AOC are usually not listed. For the most part, this wiki simply reflects the self-reports of online faculty listings, which is a way to avoid having to make judgment calls about who counts as a philosopher of biology in borderline cases. The rule of thumb is: someone counts if they say they count. That said, erring on the side of being inclusive is generally a good policy since prospective students can peruse bios, CVs, and publication lists to help determine whether they think a borderline faculty member would be potentially helpful to their phil bio research interests.[3]
  4. Affiliated, part-time, and emeritus faculty who work closely with graduate students should be labelled as such inside parentheses next to their names, e.g., Joe Dumit (Science & Technology Studies) // website, CV, PhilPapers. It is often best to explain the role these individuals play in programs at greater length on Wiki Program Pages. The point of listing them to begin with is not to pad a department's stats by inflating the number of philosophers of biology, but rather to identify individuals who will potentially be of use to graduate students, but who might not be found on a department website.
  5. Bioethics, environmental ethics, philosophy of neuroscience/cognitive science, philosophy of medicine, and history of biology—in and of themselves—are not counted as philosophy of biology, though philosophers of biology with those interests are listed.

How to Contribute

This is a wiki, so anyone can contribute. 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—especially, e.g., links to pdf CVs since their filenames often contain the (approximate) dates of creation, which change—so by all means help keep things up to date.

Wiki formatting/markup is very straightforward. Just click 'Edit' at the top of the page—or next to the entry you want to modify—and mimic the format of existing entries. Not all entries list the specialties of faculty members or whether faculty members are willing to work with new students. If that information is known, please add it, since that is very helpful to prospective students.

Every program listed also has a separate Wiki Program Page where additional information can be provided to prospective students. While the style and format of this main page should be kept consistent, individual Wiki Program Pages can take any form whatsoever. To edit one of these pages, simply follow the Wiki Program Page link underneath the department listing of interest and edit that page. To add a Wiki Program Page, follow the directions here.[4]

Unless otherwise specified, Wiki Program Pages presently contain the same information as the front-page listing, though that should change over time.

Programs with significant participation of affiliated faculty are strongly urged to use Wiki Program Pages for the purpose of listing them and explaining their role and involvement with philosophy of biology graduate students. Simply linking on the main page to affiliated faculty in, e.g., a history department, law school, medical school, etc., is likely to be confusing to prospective students who do not know how these individuals are connected to the Ph.D. program they are researching.[5]

This site does not pretend to provide an exhaustive list of philosophy of biology graduate programs, though that is the goal. Contributing will help to achieve that goal sooner rather than later.

Questions, comments, ideas? Let me know at shamiller@ucdavis.edu.

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 Australasia and Canadian programs by specialty on this page. Once that list includes programs from other parts of the world, it will be moved to the front page.

The full program list below this table is sorted alphabetically by country/region. 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 U.S. Ph.D. Programs by State
1 Faculty Member‎ (19 P)
2 Faculty Members‎ (9 P)
3 Faculty Members‎ (10 P)
4 Faculty Members‎ (5 P)
5 Faculty Members‎ (3 P)
6+ Faculty Members‎ (2 P)
Arizona‎ (1 P)
California‎ (5 P)
Florida‎ (1 P)
Illinois‎ (1 P)
Indiana‎ (2 P)
Kansas‎ (1 P)
Maryland‎ (1 P)
Massachusetts‎ (1 P)
Michigan‎ (1 P)
Minnesota‎ (1 P)
New York‎ (2 P)
North Carolina‎ (1 P)
Ohio‎ (1 P)
Pennsylvania‎ (3 P)
Texas‎ (2 P)
Utah‎ (1 P)
Wisconsin‎ (1 P)

Ph.D. Programs (Australasia)

All programs reside in philosophy departments, unless otherwise specified. Wiki Program Pages contain identical information to front-page listings, also unless otherwise specified.

Australian National University

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Kim Sterelny // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, Evolution, Philosophy of Psychology and Philosophy of Mind (via website)

Macquarie University

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Rachael Brown // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: The evolution of cognition and behaviour; the relationship between evolutionary developmental biology and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis; model-based reasoning in biology and philosophy; and methodological issues in the study of animal behaviour and cognition (via website)
  • Karola Stotz // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Evolutionary, developmental and molecular biology, psychobiology and cognition (via website)

University of Otago (New Zealand)

{Wiki Program Page}

  • James Maclaurin // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, including innateness, fitness, theoretical morphology, biological diversity and universal darwinism (via website)

University of Sydney

{Wiki Program Page}

  • David Braddon-Mitchell // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of Mind and metaphysics, and cross borders into philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, ethics and political philosophy from time to time (via website)
  • Paul Griffiths // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Causal foundations of biological information; evolutionary medicine; innateness and human nature; concept of the gene; developmental systems theory (via website)

Waikato University (New Zealand)

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Justine Kingsbury // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of mind; philosophy of biology; critical thinking; aesthetics (especially philosophy of music) (via website)

Ph.D. Programs (Canada)

All programs reside in philosophy departments, unless otherwise specified. Wiki Program Pages contain identical information to front-page listings, also unless otherwise specified.

University of Alberta

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Ingo Brigandt // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Evolutionary developmental biology, molecular biology, systems biology, science and values
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Robert A. Wilson // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Essentialism in biology, the nature of species, levels and units of natural selection, group-level cognition, organisms (via CV)

University of British Columbia

{Wiki Program Page}

  • John Beatty // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Theoretical foundations, methodology, and socio-political dimensions of genetics and evolutionary biology (via website)
  • Margaret Schabas // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Overlap of biology and economics and the formation of bioeconomics (via website)
  • Christopher Stephens // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory, causation, the nature of evidence in evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism, phylogenetic inference, and on models of the evolution of rationality (via website)

University of Calgary

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Megan Delehanty // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Models, explanation, causation (via PhilPapers entries)
  • Marc Ereshefsky // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Species; Natural Kinds; Scientific Classification; Biological Individuality; Homology; Historicity; Microbiology (via website)
  • C. Kenneth Waters // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Causation, explanation, molecular biology, genetics, pluralism (via PhilPapers entries)

University of Toronto

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Ronald de Sousa (emeritus) // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
  • Mohan Matthen // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of mind, especially perception, philosophy of biology, natural selection (via PhilPapers profile)
  • Paul Thompson // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Evolutionary theory, population genetics, mathematical modelling in biology, theory structure in biology, philosophy of medicine, and ethics (via website)
  • Denis Walsh // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Models, mechanisms, fitness, causation (via PhilPapers entries)

University of Waterloo

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Carla Fehr // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of biology, Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Feminist Science Studies, Philosophy of Science, evolution (via website)
  • Paul Thagard // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of science and medicine, cognitive science, philosophy of mind. Specific topics include analogy, coherence, decision making, conceptual change, explanatory reasoning, theoretical neuroscience, discovery and innovation, emotions and consciousness, moral psychology, and theories and explanations in biomedicine (via website)

University of Western Ontario

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Gillian Barker // website, PhilPapers
  • Eric Desjardins // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Environmental Philosophy and Bioethics (via website)
  • Devin Henry // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Ancient Philosophy, History & Philosophy of Science (esp. Philosophy of Biology) (via website)

Ph.D. Programs (United Kingdom)

All programs reside in philosophy departments, unless otherwise specified. Wiki Program Pages contain identical information to front-page listings, also unless otherwise specified.

Birkbeck, University of London

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Robert Northcott // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of science, and especially the ‘special sciences’ such as biology and economics; metaphysics, especially the notions of causation and causal explanation; analysis of use of statistical techniques to measure causation, the place of causal explanation in evolutionary theory; role played by formal theory in economics (via website)

University of Bristol

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Samir Okasha // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialities: evolutionary theory, levels of selection, population genetics, social evolution, rational choice
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University of Cambridge (History and Philosophy of Science)

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Tim Lewens // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, philosophical bioethics

University of Exeter (Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology)

{Wiki Program Page}

  • John Dupre // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Particular interests include: biological classification, the relation of technical to everyday biological kinds and to traditional problems of essentialism; adaptationism and optimality; reductionism; indeterministic accounts of causality; evolution and the limitations of evolutionary psychology; and the biological basis of sex and gender. Also worked for several years on issues in the philosophy of economics (via website)
  • Sabina Leonelli // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Data-Intensive Science and Practices of Data Sharing and Re-Use; Open Science and Open Data; The Regulatory Role and Epistemic Impact of Bioinformatics in Biology and Biomedicine; Bio-Ontologies; History and Epistemic Status of Model Organism Research; History, Philosophy and Sociology of Plant Biology; The Role of Embodied Knowledge and Skills in Scientific Understanding; Abstraction and Modelling Processes in Biology; Distributed Cognition and Division of Scientific Labor; Unity, Disunity and Integration in Science: Early American Pragmatism; Science Policy and the Globalisation and Political Economy of Scientific Research (via website)
  • Staffan Muller-Wille // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: History and philosophy of systematics; history of heredity; history of race and kinship (via website)

King's College London

{Wiki Program Page}

Lancaster University (Politics, Philosophy and Religion)

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Leeds

{Wiki Program Page}

London School of Economics (Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method)

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Jonathan Birch // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialities: Natural selection, evolution of social behaviour, evolutionary transitions, human evolution.
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University College London (Science and Technology Studies)

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Oxford

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Ellen Clarke // website 1, , 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Biological Individuality, Evolutionary Transitions, evolution of cooperation, natural selection, Philosophy of biology, philosophy of science

Ph.D. Programs (United States)

All programs reside in philosophy departments, unless otherwise specified. Wiki Program Pages contain identical information to front-page listing, also unless otherwise specified.

Arizona State University (Center for Biology and Society)

{Wiki Program Page}

Boston University

{Wiki Program Page}

Carnegie Mellon University

{Wiki Program Page}

City University of New York Graduate Center

{Wiki Program Page}

Columbia University

{Wiki Program Page}

Duke University

{Wiki Program Page}

Florida State University

{Wiki Program Page}

Indiana University (History and Philosophy of Science)

{Wiki Program Page}

Michigan State University

{Wiki Program Page}

Stanford University

{Wiki Program Page}

Texas A&M University

{Wiki Program Page}

University of California, Davis

{Wiki Program Page} <-- Page contains additional program information

  • James R. Griesemer // website 1, 2, 3, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Evolutionary biology, genetics, developmental biology, ecology and systematics
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Roberta L. Millstein // website 1, 2, 3, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: History and philosophy of evolutionary biology and ecology, causation, chance, environmental ethics
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University of California, Irvine (Logic and Philosophy of Science)

{Wiki Program Page}

University of California, San Diego

{Wiki Program Page}

University of California, Santa Cruz

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University of Chicago (Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science)

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Cincinnati

{Wiki Program Page} <-- Page contains additional program information

  • Tony Chemero // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: neuroscience, ecological psychology, artificial life, dynamical systems and complex systems, cognitive science
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Valerie Hardcastle // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: neurobiology, neuropsychiatry and the law, embodied cognition
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Koffi N. Maglo // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: philosophy of biomedicine, genomics and race, race-based medicine, bioethics
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Thomas W. Polger // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: multiple realization and realization; explanation in life, brain, and cognitive sciences; role of evolutionary theory in thinking about minds and consciousness; neuroscience and cognitive sciences
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Angela Potochnik // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: methodology of population biology, behavioral ecology, explanation, idealization, socially engaged philosophy of science, logical empiricism
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Robert C. Richardson // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: evolutionary theory, developmental biology, cognitive science, theory change
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Robert A. Skipper, Jr. // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: history of evolutionary genetics, evolutionary genetics, obesity science, controversies, explanation, socially engaged philosophy of science
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University of Kansas

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Maryland, College Park

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities[7]

{Wiki Program Page} <-- Page contains additional program information

  • Alan C. Love // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: History and philosophy of evolutionary developmental biology, evolutionary theory, developmental biology, functional morphology, conceptual change, explanatory pluralism, reductionism, the nature of historical science, interdisciplinary epistemology, and the structure of scientific problems
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • William C. Wimsatt (part-time appointment, Fall semesters) // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: history and philosophy of biology, cultural evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, complex systems
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

University of Missouri

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Notre Dame

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Pennsylvania

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Cristina Bicchieri // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: evolutionary game theory, evolution of social norms
  • Gary Hatfield // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: history of philosophy of biology, perception, neuroscience and psychology
  • Quayshawn Spencer (starts Spring 2015; currently at USF) // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: population genetics, phylogenetics, biology and race
  • Michael Weisberg // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: tradeoffs and Idealization in modeling, agent-based models in evolution and ecology, origin of life, biology and race

University of Pittsburgh (History and Philosophy of Science)

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Texas at Austin

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Utah

{Wiki Program Page}

University of Wisconsin-Madison

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Daniel Hausman // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Rational choice theory, game theory, the concept of measurement and health
  • Elliott Sober // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of evolutionary biology, confirmation, explanation, reductionism, modeling, probability and statistics, parsimony
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Russ Shafer-Landau // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Evolutionary debunking arguments targeting morality
  • Lawrence Shapiro // website, CV, PhilPapers
  • Michael Titelbaum // website, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Bayesian epistemology

Washington University in St. Louis

{Wiki Program Page}

  • Carl F. Craver // website 1, 2, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of neuroscience, theories of explanation, philosophy of psychology, cognitive neuropsychology
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes
  • Dennis DesChene // website, CV, PhilPapers
  • Ron Mallon // website, PhilPapers
  • Anya Plutynski // website, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: History and philosophy of biology, general philosophy of science, cancer biology, early 20th Century genetics, evolutionary theory, explanation, modeling.
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

M.A. Programs

Concordia University, Montreal

Louisiana State University

Oregon State University

Tufts University

University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Ethics & Applied Philosophy)

Virginia Tech

  • Benjamin Jantzen // website 1, 2, CV, PhilPapers
    • Specialties: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Physics, General Philosophy of Science, Biophysics
    • Willing to work with new students? Yes

Notes

  1. ↑ This site is not in the business of giving prospective students advice—on how to select programs or anything else—but it can be very helpful and illuminating to contact graduate students currently enrolled in departments you are considering and asking if they would be willing to share their impressions of and experience in the programs. The worst that can happen is that they say 'no'. Of course, what they share must be taken with a grain of salt since everyone's experiences differ, and disgruntled students will paint a radically different picture than contented ones. For that reason, seeking out multiple sources can be worthwhile.
  2. ↑ For the most part, free-standing Science & Technology Studies (or Science Studies) departments aren't listed. The rationale for this is that since this wiki's intended audience is prospective philosophy/HPS Ph.D. students, the assumption is that they aren't targeting STS programs. Of course, there are borderline departments that aren't strictly philosophy or history and philosophy of science, e.g., the University of Exeter's Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy; the University of Chicago's Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science; and Arizona State University's Center for Biology and Society, all of which are listed.
  3. ↑ Also, as long as a department has one full-time, self-described philosopher of biology, the graduate program is listed, which makes the determination of whether other faculty count as philosophers of biology less crucial.
  4. ↑ If adding a new Wiki Program Page seems too daunting, that's fine. One is likely to be created for you after a period of time.
  5. ↑ The other downside of listing on the main page affiliated faculty whose connection to a philosophy of biology graduate program is unclear is that other contributors may remove them. This is, after all, a wiki.
  6. ↑ Though he does not list philosophy of biology as a current AOS, Kitcher writes on his faculty profile page—accessed 2014-11-18—that he is willing to work with philosophy of biology graduate students.
  7. ↑ Some of the Resident Fellows at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science also have philosophy of biology interests.

Wiki Editing Resources

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