Alisa Bokulich is an American philosopher of science and

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

. Since 2010 she has been the Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, where she organizes the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, and serves as a Series Editor for Boston Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. She was the first woman ever to be tenured in the Philosophy Department at Boston University and the first woman to become a director of a center for history and philosophy of science in North America.

Education

Bokulich attended high school at Forest Ridge School in Bellevue, Washington, got her Bachelor's in Philosophy, with a minor in Physics, from

Washington State University Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant unive ...

, and received her Ph.D. from the Program in

History and Philosophy of Science The history and philosophy of science (HPS) is an Discipline (academia), academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the History of science and technology, history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained ...

at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

, under the direction of the physicist James T. Cushing. Her academic genealogy, traced through Ph.D. dissertation advisors, is Cushing—Max Dresden—George Uhlenbeck--

Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest (18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian theoretical physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition an ...

Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodyn ...

Research

Her research focuses on the history and philosophy of the

physical sciences Physical science is a branch of natural science that studies non-living systems, in contrast to life science. It in turn has many branches, each referred to as a "physical science", together called the "physical sciences". Definition Phy ...

, especially classical and

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

, and more recently philosophy of the

Earth sciences Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four sphere ...

. She has published widely on topics such as

models A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

explanation An explanation is a set of Statement (logic), statements usually constructed to description, describe a set of facts which clarifies the causality, causes, wiktionary:context, context, and Logical consequence, consequences of those facts. It may ...

natural kind "Natural kind" is an intellectual grouping, or categorizing of things, in a manner that is reflective of the actual world and not just human interests. Some treat it as a classification identifying some structure of truth and reality that exists wh ...

thought experiment A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. History The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most anci ...

s, fictions in science,

supertask In philosophy, a supertask is a countably infinite sequence of operations that occur sequentially within a finite interval of time. Supertasks are called hypertasks when the number of operations becomes uncountably infinite. A hypertask that inc ...

s, and the history of

quantum theory Quantum theory may refer to: Science *Quantum mechanics, a major field of physics *Old quantum theory, predating modern quantum mechanics * Quantum field theory, an area of quantum mechanics that includes: ** Quantum electrodynamics ** Quantum ch ...

. She is the author of the book ''Reexamining the Quantum-Classical Relation: Beyond Reductionism and Pluralism'' (Cambridge University Press 2008), which has been well received by physicists and philosophers alike, and co-editor of four other books.

References

External links

Alisa Bokulich's Boston University website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bokulich, Alisa Living people Boston University faculty Philosophers from Massachusetts Philosophers of science Washington State University alumni University of Notre Dame alumni Year of birth missing (living people)