Philip Kitcher

Philip Kitcher received his B.A. from Cambridge University and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He has taught at several American Universities and is currently John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is the author of books on topics ranging from the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of biology, the growth of science, the role of science in society, naturalistic ethics, pragmatism, Wagner’s Ring, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and Mann’s Death in Venice. He has been President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division) and Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was also the first recipient of the Prometheus Prize, awarded by the American Philosophical Association for work in expanding the frontiers of Science and Philosophy. He has been named a “Friend of Darwin” by the National Committee on Science Education and received a Lannan Foundation Notable Book Award for Living With Darwin. He has been a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where he was partially supported by a prize from the Humboldt Foundation, and in the autumn of 2015 he was the Daimler Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. His most recent books are Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism (Yale University Press, 2014), and The Seasons Alter: How to Save our Planet in Six Acts, co-authored with Evelyn Fox Keller, (W.W. Norton, 2017). He is currently at work on a systematic version of Deweyan pragmatism, tentatively entitled Progress, Truth, and Values.

Philip Kitcher is a member of the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience Advisory Committee.