ckwaters@umn.edu

735 Heller
612-625-4325

My research concerns the nature of scientific knowledge and the conditions that make this knowledge possible. I believe that biology provides an illuminating context for investigating a number of philosophical issues concerning science, and am fascinated by biologists’ efforts to investigate, manipulate, and understand life. I am particularly interested in evolutionary biology, where my research mostly concerns issues related to epistemic pluralism, and in genetics and allied sciences, where my research concerns issues about realism, reductionism, and the structure of scientific knowledge. I am currently developing positions on these philosophical issues and working out new ideas about causation and causal reasoning to address a central question about contemporary biology: why is so much research attention centered on genes and DNA?

Selected Publications

“Causes that Make a Difference”, Journal of Philosophy 104 (2007): 551-579.

“A Pluralist Interpretation of Gene-centered Biology”, in Scientific Pluralism , volume XIX of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, edited by Stephen Kellert, Helen Longino, and C. Kenneth Waters, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

“Why Genic and Multilevel Selection Theories are Here to Stay”, Philosophy of Science 72 (2) (2005): 311 - 33.

"What was Classical Genetics?”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35 (2004): 783-809.

“The Arguments in Darwin’s Origin of Species”, in The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, edited by Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

"Genes Made Molecular", Philosophy of Science, 61 (1994), 163-85.

"Why the Anti-reductionist Consensus Won't Survive: The Case of Classical Mendelian Genetics", in PSA 1990 1 (1990), pp. 125-39. Reprinted in Elliott Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 3rd Edition (2006), MA: Bradford, The MIT Press.