Elliott Sober
Elliott Reuben Sober (born June 6, 1948 in Baltimore ) is an American philosopher . He is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin – Madison .
Scientific work
Sober is known for his work in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of science in general . He taught at Stanford University for a year and was a regular visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science .
His dissertation ( Ph.D. ) in Philosophy He moved to Harvard University in Hilary Putnam on (himself a student Hans Reichenbach). In addition, his work is strongly influenced by the work of the biologist Richard Lewontin .
He has a close collaboration and several publications with David Sloan Wilson . Like these biologists, Sober is a prominent and harsh critic of the idea of intelligent design , in which he particularly attacked the empirical non-verifiability.
One of the main areas of his research is the central idea of "parsimony" (cf. Ockham's razor ) in natural science and in connection with the examination of theories in the philosophy of science. Its publication Simplicity of 1975 a series followed on this subject of influential publications in great philosophical journals.
The main theme of his cooperation with David Sloan Wilson is the evolution of cooperation, which Sober and Wilson see as essentially based on an important role of group selection and less on the reciprocal altruism of the classical definition. In 1999 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 2020 he was elected to the British Academy as a foreign member .
Book publications
- Simplicity . Oxford University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-19-824407-X . (= PhD dissertation, Harvard 1974)
- (Editor) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology: An Anthology . Bradford / MIT Press, 1984; 2nd edition, 1993, ISBN 0-262-19549-6 .
- Core Questions in Philosophy: A Text with Readings . Macmillan, 1990; 2nd Edition Prentice Hall 1994; 3rd Edition Prentice Hall 2001, ISBN 0-13-083537-4 .
- The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus . Bradford / MIT Press, 1984; 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, 1993, ISBN 0-262-19232-2 .
- Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference . Bradford / MIT Press, 1988, ISBN 0-262-19273-X .
- (with Erik O. Wright and Andrew Levine ) Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on Explanation and the Theory of History . Verso Press, 1992, ISBN 0-86091-342-2 .
- Philosophy of Biology . Westview Press (in Great Britain: Oxford University Press), 1993; 2nd edition 1999, ISBN 0-8133-0785-6 .
- From a Biological Point of View: Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy . Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-47184-2 .
- (with David S. Wilson ) Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior . Harvard University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-674-93047-9 .
- (Edited with Steven Orzack ) Adaptationism and Optimality . Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-59166-X .
- Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science . Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-521-69274-1 .
Web links
- Elliott Sobers homepage at the University of Wisconsin
- Literature by and about Elliott Sober in the WorldCat bibliographic database
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sober, Elliott |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sober, Elliott Reuben (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American philosopher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 6, 1948 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Baltimore |