William C. Wimsatt

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William C. Wimsatt is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (previously Conceptual Foundations of Science), and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the philosophy of biology, where his areas of interest include reductionism, heuristics, emergence, modeling, heredity, and cultural evolution.

Wimsatt received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971. His thesis consisted of a philosophical analysis of biological function, and was published in two parts as "Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements" (1972) and "Functional Organization, Functional Analogy, and Functional Inference" (1997). From July 1969 to December 1970, he was a postdoctoral fellow in population biology with Richard Lewontin at the University of Chicago, and became a professor of Philosophy there upon receiving his PhD. Lewontin, Richard Levins, Herbert Simon, and Donald T. Campbell are all important influences on Wimsatt's work.

Some of the most important commentators on Wimsatt's writings are his students, many of whom are now working as philosophers of science, e.g. Marshall Abrams, Douglas Allchin, William Bechtel, Stuart Glennan, James R. Griesemer, Jeffry Ramsey, Sahotra Sarkar, and Jeffrey Schank. A variety of old and new papers has recently been collected in his book Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (2007).

Wimsatt frequently co-teaches courses with prominent linguist Salikoko Mufwene.^[1]

[edit] Selected Publications

(1972). "Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3: 1-80.
(1980). "Reductionistic Research Strategies and their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy." In Scientific Discovery: Case Studies, ed. T. Nickles, pp. 213-259.
(1981). "Units of Selection and the Structure of the Multi-Level Genome." PSA 1980: 122-183.
(1986). "Developmental Constraints, Generative Entrenchment, and the Innate-Acquired Distinction." In Integrating Scientific Disciplines, ed. W. Bechtel, pp. 185-208.
(1997). "Functional Organization, Functional Analogy, and Functional Inference." Evolution and Cognition 3: 2-32.
(1999). "Genes, Memes, and Cultural Inheritance." Biology and Philosophy 14: 279-310
(2007). Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.