Arnold Davidson

Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor
Philosophy

Office: Stuart 228
Phone: (773) 702-9849

Arnold I. Davidson is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, the Divinity School, and the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. European Editor of Critical Inquiry, he is also a director of the France-Chicago Center. His major fields of research and teaching are the history of contemporary European philosophy, the history of moral and political philosophy, the history of the human sciences, the history and philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of Judaism.

Arnold Davidson

Judith B. Farquhar

Max Palevsky Professor Emerita

Judith Farquhar does research on traditional medicine, popular culture, and everyday life in contemporary China. Anthropological areas of interest include medical anthropology; the anthropology of knowledge and of embodiment; critical theory and cultural studies; and theories of reading, writing, and translation.

Judith B. Farquhar

Jan E. Goldstein

Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History, the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and the College

Office: SS 501
Phone: (773) 702-8388

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Modern European intellectual and cultural history; modern France (political and social as well as intellectual and cultural); history of the human sciences, especially psychiatry and psychoanalysis; conceptions of selfhood and identity; historical methodology

Jan E. Goldstein

Karl Matlin

History of Cell and Molecular Biology, Epithelial Cell Biology

Karl Matlin is a cell biologist whose laboratory research is focused on the mechanisms by which epithelial cells spatially polarize to form normal epithelia or to directionally migrate during wound repair. 

Karl Matlin

Robert Perlman, MD PhD

Professor Emeritus

The goal of my academic work is to help physicians, biomedical scientists, and students appreciate the value of evolutionary biology for medical research, education, and practice. Evolutionary concepts provide a framework for understanding why we remain vulnerable to disease. Several aspects of evolutionary biology have special relevance to medicine. The theory of host-pathogen coevolution helps to explain the natural histories of infectious diseases and calls attention to the idea that the manifestations of disease may be part of our evolved defense mechanisms. Life history theory enriches our understanding of aging and provides novel insights into socioeconomic disparities in health. Finally, evolutionary theory helps us appreciate the origins and significance of human variation. Integration of an evolutionary perspective into medical research may lead to new interventions to prevent, cure, or ameliorate disease.

 

Robert Perlman

Stephen Stigler

Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Statistics and the College

Office: Jones 215
Phone: (773) 702-8328

Stephen M. Stigler is interested in the history of statistics and probability, from the appearance of early concepts in gambling, astronomy, and geodesy, to the development of statistical methods in social science and biology, including the ways those methods have helped to shape core ideas in these sciences.

Stephen Stigler

William Wimsatt

Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus

William Wimsatt, Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, served as Professor of Philosophy and is a member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology and the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science. He studied engineering, physics, and philosophy at Cornell, earning a BA in 1965. He received the PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971 and began working at the University of Chicago in the same year. Wimsatt taught in the Biology Collegiate Division (undergraduate), the Committee on Conceptual Foundations of Science (graduate), the Program in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science (undergraduate), the Committee on Evolutionary Biology (graduate), the MA Program in the Social Sciences (graduate), and, of course, the Department of Philosophy (graduate and undergraduate). His work centers on the philosophy of the inexact sciences--biology, psychology, and the social sciences--the history of biology, and the study of complex systems. He continues, in retirement, to teach classes.

William Wimsatt won the 2015 Norman Maclean Faculty Award from the UChicago Alumni Association.

William Wimsatt