Evolving Thoughts

Evolution, culture, philosophy and chocolate! John Wilkins' continuing struggle to come to terms with impermanence... "Humanus sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto" - Terence

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Sterelny wins the Lakatos Award

My masters supervisor, Kim Sterelny, has just won the Lakatos Award for his book, Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition (Blackwell Publishers, 2003), in which he discusses the problem of naturalizing epistemology, using an evolutionary account.

Kim is one of the rare critics of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology who tries very hard to do what he thinks is the right way to incorporate evolution and mind, rather than carping from the sidelines.

The Lakatos Award is given for "an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the previous six years". Kim's background in both philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind makes him an ideal contributor for this task.

Six months of the year, Kim is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and the rest of the time he's at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

I haven't read it yet, Kim, but I promise I will...