Robert J. Richards

Morris Fishbein Professor of Science and Medicine
Professor of History, Philosophy and Psychology
Director of the Fishbein Center
Ph.D. St. Louis University 1971
Ph.D. University of Chicago 1978

FIELD SPECIALTIES

History of Biology and Psychology; Philosophy of History; German Intellectual History.

BIOGRAPHY

I do research on history and philosophy of biology and psychology, as well as on German Romanticism. This includes particular interest in evolutionary biopsychology, ethology, and sociobiology.  Concerning philosophic and metahistoric problems, I have argued for a revaluation of evolutionary ethics and have developed a natural selection model for historiographic analysis. My first book treats evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. That history discusses the period from the late 18th century to the present, but particularly focuses on the work of Charles Darwin. Other figures that receive major attention are: Herbert Spencer, George Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, William James, James Mark Baldwin, Konrad Lorenz, and Edward O. Wilson. In another book, I have traced the gradual alteration in meaning of the concept of 'evolution' from the 17th century up to Darwin and contemporary neo-Darwinians. I argue that Darwin's own theory has a radically different character than usually thought.  In another vein, I have written a history of German Romanticism during the period 1770-1830.  I argue that the German Romantics held that aesthetic approaches to nature and scientific approaches were complementary, and that this conception had a powerful impact on both art and biological science of the period. Among the figures treated are: Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Kant, Schelling, and Goethe.  Most recently I have completed a book on German evolutionary theory, especially examining the trajectory of Ernst Haeckel; he was supposed to have committed egregious fraud and produced theories that led to the rise of Nazi biology.  I dispute both of these contentions.  Currently I am embarked on an historical and philosophical commentary on Darwin’s Origin of Species.  I teach courses on all of the above topics, as well as courses on the philosophy of history and ancient Greek philosophy and science.

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PUBLICATIONS

The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over
Evolutionary Thought (University of Chicago Press,
forthcoming, 2007)

The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; paperback, 1989;winner of the Pfizer Prize in History of Science)

The Meaning of Evolution: the Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin's Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992; paperback, 1993)

"Nature is the Poetry of Mind, or How Schelling Solved Goethe's Kantian Problems," in Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordman (eds.), Kant and the Sciences (Boston: MIT Press, 2005)

"Darwin's Metaphysics of Mind," in Darwin and Philosophy, ed. Vittorio Hoesle and Christian Illies (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), pp. 166-80.

"The Relation of Spencer's Evolutionary Theory to Darwin's," in Great Jones and Robert Peel (eds.), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy (London: The Galton Institute, 2004), pp. 17-36.

"If This be Heresy: Haeckel's Conversion to Darwinism," in Abigail Lusting, Robert J. Richards, and Michael Ruse (eds.), Darwinian Heresies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 101-30.

"Did Friedrich Schelling Kill Auguste Böhmer and Does it Matter? Or, the Role of Biography in Intellectual History," in Biography and Historical Analysis, ed. Lloyd Ambrosius (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,2004): pp.133-54.

"The Erotic Authority of Nature: Science, Art, and the Female during Goethe's Italian Journey," in The Moral Authority of Nature, ed. Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 127-54.

"The Evolution of Mind, Behavior, and Emotions," in Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

"The Linguistic Creation of Man: Charles Darwin, August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and the Missing Link in 19th-Century Evolutionary Theory," in Experimenting in Tongues: Studies in Science and Language, ed. Matthias Doerres (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

"Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb Historical Misunderstanding," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences (2000)

"The Epistemology of Historical Interpretation: Progressivity and Recapitulation in Darwin's Theory" in Epistemology and Biology, eds. Richard Creath and Jane Maienschein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

"The Nature and Necessity of Cultural History of Science," The Modern Schoolman,1999.

"Darwin's Romantic Biology, the Foundation of his Evolutionary Ethics," in Biology and the Foundation of Ethics, ed. Jane Maienschein and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999), pp. 113-53. (A briefer version of this article has been distributed as the Stiernotte Lecture for 1997).

"Charles Darwin," The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)

"Rhapsodies on a Cat-Piano, or Johann Christian Reil and the Foundations of Romantic Psychiatry, Critical Inquiry 24, no. 3 (spring, 1998): 700-736.

"The Darwinian Justification of Altruism," Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Studies in Bioethics and Research Ethics) 3 (1998): 37-50.

"Theological Foundations of Darwin's Theory of Evolution," in Science in Context, eds. Karen Parshall and Paul Theerman, (Rutgers University Press, 1996).

"Arguments in a Sartorial Mode, or the Asymmetries of History and Philosophy of Science," in Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992, vol. 2, eds. M. Forbes and D. Hull (1994)

"Resistance to Constructed Belief," in Questions of Evidence, eds. J. Chandler, A. Davidson, and H. Harootunian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)

"Ideology and the History of Science," in Biology and Philosophy, 8 (1993): 103-108

"Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Evolutionary Ethics," in Evolutionary Ethics, ed. Matthew Nitecki (New York: SUNY, 1993). reprinted as "Evolutionäre Ethik revidiert und gerechtfertigt," in Evolution und Ethik, ed. Kurt Bayertz (Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 1993), pp. 168–98.

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