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Michael Weisberg

Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy

Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of Post Graduate Programs at Perry World House

Editor-in-Chief, Biology and Philosophy

Co-Director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance

Ph.D. Stanford University

Michael Weisberg is Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor and Chair of Philosophy, as well as Senior Faculty Fellow and Director of Post-Graduate Programs at Perry World House. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Biology and Philosophy, advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Nairobi Work Programme, climate advisor to the Republic of Maldives, and directs Penn’s campus-wide research in Galápagos. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and Galápagos: Life in Motion, as well as a contributing author to the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report. Much of Professor Weisberg’s research is focused on how highly idealized models and simulations can be used to understand complex systems. He also leads efforts to better understanding the interface between humans and wildlife, between humans and the climate system, and how scientific issues are understood by communities in the Americas and in East Asia. Professor Weisberg received a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 1999, and continued graduate study in Philosophy and Evolutionary Biology at Stanford University, earning a 2003 Ph.D. in Philosophy. 

 

Research Interests

  • Philosophy of Science
  • Philosophy of Biology
  • Philosophy of Chemistry
  • Public Understanding of Science
  • Community Science

Selected Publications

Find me on PhilPapers: http://philpapers.org/profile/81

Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, 2013, Oxford University Press.

Galápagos: Life in Motion, forthcoming 2018, Princeton Unviersity Press (with Walter Perez)

"Three Kinds of Idealization," The Journal of Philosophy, 104 (12) 639-59.

“Robustness Analysis,”Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, 73, 730–742.

“Who is a Modeler?”, British Journal for Philosophy of Science, 58, 207–233.

(215) 898-0417

421 Cohen Hall

by appointment

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