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 t ...

and

historian of ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...

. 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 pu ...

(1985–1989) and

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

(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 The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung'', MPIfG) is a German social-science research institute within the Max Planck Society located in Cologne. Established in 1985, it was ...

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 modeled ...

(1993–1994), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2010). Mitchell received a B.A. in philosophy from

Pitzer College Pitzer College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. One of the Claremont Colleges, the college has a curricular emphasis on the social sciences, behavioral sciences, international programs, and media studies. Pitzer is ...

(1973), a M.Sc. in Logic, Philosophy and Scientific Method from the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 mill ...

(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 suffic ...

) 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 Weingart (born 5 June 1941 in Marburg) is a German professor emeritus in sociology and former director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld. Life and academic career Peter Weingart studied sociology and economics fr ...

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 The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divide ...

): ''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