Sandra D. Mitchell (born 1951) 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 ...

and historian of ideas. She holds the position of distinguished professor in the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

, the top rated school in the world for the subject according to the 2011 Philosophical Gourmet Report. Her research focuses on the

philosophy of biology The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long ...

and the

philosophy of social science The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences (psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, etc...). Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities be ...

, and connections between the two.

Biography

Sandra D. Mitchell worked at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

(1985–1989) and

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

(1989–1999), before joining the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in 2000. She has been a fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, at the University of Bielefeld (1991–1992), the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

(2004–2005), the

Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (german: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) is an interdisciplinary institute founded in 1981 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany, dedicated to research projects in the natural and social sciences. It is model ...

(1993–1994), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2010). Mitchell received a B.A. in philosophy from Pitzer College (1973), a M.Sc. in Logic, Philosophy and Scientific Method from the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

(1975), and a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh (1987). In her more recent articles, she has argued that the search for a unified, reductionist

Theory of Everything A theory of everything (TOE or TOE/ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all asp ...

is futile. Instead, she suggests that the sciences focus on studying the complex correlations between elements and their emergent effects (

self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suff ...

) that, as she argues, a strictly reductionist approach is not able to adequately address."Die Weltformel ist tot", in Der Spiegel, 2008-05-3

retrieved 2008-06-22

Bibliography

*1997 (edited with Peter Weingart,

Peter Richerson Peter James Richerson (born October 11, 1943) is an American biologist. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. Life Richerson studied entomology at UC Da ...

, Sabine Maasen): ''Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences'', Mahwah, New Jersey:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 Research or Dovepress. It is a division of Informa plc, a United Ki ...

. *2002 (edited with

John Earman John Earman (born 1942) is an American philosopher of physics. He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rocke ...

Clark Glymour Clark N. Glymour (born 1942) is the Alumni University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Work Glymou ...

): ''Ceteris Paribus Laws.'' Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. *2003: ''Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *2008: ''Komplexitäten: Warum wir erst anfangen, die Welt zu verstehen'', Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag. In January 2010 the ...

, *2009: Unsimple Truths: Science,Complexity and Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Sandra 1951 births Living people Alumni of the London School of Economics American philosophers Philosophers of science University of Pittsburgh faculty American historians of philosophy Philosophers of biology Philosophers of social science American women historians 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers

Biography

Bibliography

See also

References

External links