People
Sandra D. Mitchell, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Science, especially Philosophy of Biology and Philosophy of the Social Sciences
PhD, Pittsburgh, 1987
Sandra Mitchell is Professor and Chair of History and Philosophy of Science, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Philosophy. Her research is in epistemological and metaphysical issues in the philosophy of science, with a focus on scientific explanations of complex behavior, and how we might best represent multi-level, multi-component complex systems. She has published articles on functional explanation, units of selection in evolutionary biology, sociobiology, biological complexity and self-organization, and scientific laws. Current interests include emergence, the methodological consequences of biological robustness and problems in representing deep uncertainty for policy decisions. She is co-editor of Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences edited by Peter Weingart, Sandra D. Mitchell, Peter Richerson and Sabine Maasen, Erlbaum Press, 1997, and Ceteris Parisbus Laws edited by John Earman, Clark Glymour and Sandra Mitchell, Erkenntnis, 2002 and author of Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism, Cambridge University Press 2003, Komplexitäten: Warum wir erst anfangen die Welt zu verstehen Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008 and (a revised English version) Unsimple Truths: Complexity, Science and Policy University of Chicago Press forthcoming in fall 2009.
Recent publications:
- “Modularity: More than a Buzzword” Essay Review”, Biological Theory 2005, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 98-101.
- “Integration without Unification: An Argument for Pluralism in the Biological Sciences” co-authored with Michael R. Dietrich, American Naturalist. 2006. Vol. 168, pp. S73–S79.
- “The Import of Uncertainty” The Pluralist, Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2007: pp. 58–71.
- “Explaining Complex Behavior” and “Taming Causal Complexity” in K. Kendler and J. Parnas (eds), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: Explanation, Phenomenology and Nosology, Johns Hopkins Press 2009
- “Exporting Causal Knowledge in Evolutionary and Developmental Biology” Philosophy of Science, forthcoming,; “Complexity and Explanation in the Social Sciences”, forthcoming in C. Mantzavinos (ed.) Philosophy of Social Science, Oxford University Press.
