Carol Edith Cleland (born 1948) is an American

philosopher of science A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

known for her work on the definition of

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

and the

shadow biosphere A shadow biosphere is a hypothetical microbial biosphere of Earth that would use radically different biochemical and molecular processes from that of currently known life. Although life on Earth is relatively well studied, if a shadow biosphere ...

, on the

classification of minerals The classification of minerals is a process of determining to which of several groups minerals belong based on their chemical characteristics. Since the 1950s, this classification has been carried out by the International Mineralogical Association, ...

by their geological history, on the distinction between historical and experimental approaches to science, and on the

Church–Turing thesis In computability theory, the Church–Turing thesis (also known as computability thesis, the Turing–Church thesis, the Church–Turing conjecture, Church's thesis, Church's conjecture, and Turing's thesis) is a thesis about the nature of comp ...

on theoretical limits to physical computation. She is a professor of philosophy at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

, holds affiliations with the

NASA Astrobiology Institute The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) was established in 1998 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) "to develop the field of astrobiology and provide a scientific framework for flight missions." In December 2019 the institute' ...

, the

SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...

, and the CU Boulder Center for Astrobiology, and directs the Center for Study of Origins.

Education and career

Cleland was an undergraduate at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

. After starting as a physics major but finding herself ill-suited to experimental work, and trying geology but finding it too male-dominated, she discovered her love for philosophy in her junior year but ended up majoring in mathematics because her science studies had left her much closer to completing the degree requirements for mathematics. She graduated in 1973. After graduating, she worked as a

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

before following her husband to Massachusetts and beginning graduate study in philosophy at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. While working towards her doctorate, she took a non-tenure-track assistant professorship at

Wheaton College (Massachusetts) Wheaton College is a private liberal arts college in Norton, Massachusetts. Wheaton was founded in 1834 as a female seminary. The trustees officially changed the name of the Wheaton Female Seminary to Wheaton College in 1912 after receiving a ...

, where she worked from 1979 to 1984. She completed her Ph.D. at Brown in 1981; her dissertation, ''Causation: An Irreducible Physical Relation'', was supervised by

Ernest Sosa Ernest Sosa (born June 17, 1940) is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University. Educa ...

. On the completion of her position at Wheaton College, she spent another year as a software engineer before returning to academia as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for The Study of Language and Information at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and then, in 1986, joining the University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant professor again. She was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and full professor in 2006.

Books

Cleland is the author of ''The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life: Searching for Life As We Don't Know It'' (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She is the co-editor, with Mark A. Bedau, of ''The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science'' (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

References

External links

Home pageCenter for Study of Origins
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cleland, Carol 1948 births Living people 20th-century American philosophers American women philosophers Philosophers of science University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Brown University alumni Wheaton College (Massachusetts) faculty University of Colorado Boulder faculty 21st-century American women 21st-century American philosophers