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In Memoriam: Richard Lewontin (1929-2021)

Brian Leiter

A few readers now have suggested I should note the passing of the great evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, whose work was very influential in philosophy of biology and with whom many philosophers of science studied at one point or another.  The NYT obituary is here, and there is a rich and very personal memorial by one of his best-known students, the biologist Jerry Coyne (Chicago).   Comments are open for those who want to comment on the significance of Lewontin's work for philosophy.

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3 responses to “In Memoriam: Richard Lewontin (1929-2021)”

  1. Charles Parsons

    Early in my time as professor at Harvard, I was put onto the Committee on Professional Conduct, of which Richard Lewontin was then Chair. I was quickly convinced that he was intellectually superior to me and also superior in other ways. The memorial by Professor Coyne shows that I didn't know the half of it, in particular as regards his ethical standards.
    Charles Parsons

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  2. Gregory C. Mayer

    Elliott Sober (Wisconsin)and Philip Kitcher (Columbia)are philosophers of science who have been influenced by Lewontin. Sober spent a sabbatical year in Lewontin's lab at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and they have published together; Kitcher spent a year at the MCZ (though not in Lewontin's lab); and both have frequently published on themes also present in Lewontin's work. Sober and Kitcher have both been much read by philosophically inclined biologists.

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  3. Gregory C. Mayer

    I should also have mentioned Michael Bradie (Bowling Green), who also spent time in Lewontin's lab; Lewontin and Richard Levins singled him out for his helpful criticism of their formulation of dialectic method in science (the final chapter of The Dialectical Biologist (Harvard U. Press, 1985)). Bradie edited a fest-issue of Biology and Philosophy for Lewontin in 1999 (vol. 52, no. 2). It included papers by Bradie, Robert Brandon (Duke), Philip Kitcher (Columbia), Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney), Elizabeth Lloyd (Indiana; she studied with Lewontin at the MCZ for a year when she was a Princeton graduate student), Sahotra Sarkar (Texas), Elliott Sober (Madison), and W.C. Wimsatt (Chicago).

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