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Michael Weisberg

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

Interim Director of Perry World House

Editor-in-Chief, Biology and Philosophy

Director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance

Ph.D. Stanford University

Michael Weisberg is interim director of Perry World House, as well as Bess W. Heyman President’s Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. A philosopher of science and senior negotiator at United Nations Climate Conferences, he is editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy, director of the Penn Laboratory for Understanding Science, and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report. Professor Weisberg also serves as senior adviser to the Maldivian Minister of Environment and advisor to the Maldivian Ambassador to the United Nations. He received a PhD and MA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry and BA in Philosophy with Highest Distinction from the University of California at San Diego.

 

Research Interests

  • Philosophy of Science
  • Global Climate Policy (especially Loss and Damage and Adaptation)
  • 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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