Alexander Rosenberg is an American philosopher, and the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Duke University is a private coeducational research university located in Durham, North Carolina, US. The school, which officially became Duke University in 1924, traces its institutional roots to 1838. ...

Rosenberg was educated at Stuyvesant High School, the City College of New York and Johns Hopkins University. He received the Lakatos Award in 1993 and was the National Phi Beta Kappa Romannel Lecturer in 2006. Stuyvesant High School, commonly known as Stuy, is a New York City public high school that specializes in math and science. ... The City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as City) is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... The Lakatos Award is given annually for a widely interpreted outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, in the form of a book published in English during the previous six years. ... The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an honor society which considers its mission to be fostering and recognizing excellence in undergraduate liberal arts and sciences. ...

His early work focused on the philosophy of social science and especially the philosophy of economics. His doctoral dissertation, published as Microeconomic Laws in 1976, was the first treatment of the nature of economics by a contemporary philosopher of science. Over the period of the next decade he became increasingly skeptical about neoclassical economics as an empirical theory. Rosenberg later shifted to work on issues in the philosophy of science that are raised by biology, and especially on the relationship between molecular biology and other parts of biology. He is among the few biologists and philosophers of science who reject the consensus view that combines physicalism with antireductionism. Rosenberg also coauthored an influential book on Hume with Tom L. Beauchamp arguing that Hume was not a skeptic about induction but an opponent of rationalist theories of ampliative inference. ^{[citation needed]} Philosophy of social science is the scholarly elucidation and debate of accounts of the nature of the social sciences, their relations to each other, and their relations to the natural sciences (see natural science). ... The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. ... Neoclassical economics refers to a general approach (a metatheory) to economics based on supply and demand which depends on individuals (or any economic agent) operating rationally, each seeking to maximize their individual utility or profit by making choices based on available information. ... Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. ... Physicalism is the metaphysical position (associated particularly with Quine) that everything is physical; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

Published books

• Microeconomic Laws: A Philosophical Analysis (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976)
• Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Basil Blackwell, 1981)
• Hume and the Problem of Causation (Oxford University Press, 1981) (with T.L. Beauchamp)
• The Structure of Biological Science (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
• Philosophy of Social Science (Clarendon Press, Oxford and Westview Press, 1988, Second Edition, Revised, Enlarged, 1995)
• Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns? (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
• Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
• Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Approach (Routledge, 2000, second edition 2005)
• Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

External links

• Alexander Rosenberg’s home page