Philosophy

In an interview with U.S News & World Report, Prof. Bradford Skow and Prof. Alex Byrne, two of the co-directors of the MIT Civil Discourse project, explain how the effort is aimed at helping students productively debate challenging issues using the Braver Angels format. “Lectures on how to ride a bike are useless; you learn by hopping on and pedaling,” they explain. “Lectures on civil discourse are marginally more effective, but learning how to discuss hard topics with people you disagree with ultimately requires seeing it done and doing it yourself.”

WBUR contributor Jonathan D. Fitzgerald spotlights Prof. Kieran Setiya’s book, “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.” “Setiya defines and provides a history of the midlife crisis, tracing its origins – perhaps not as far back as we might think – to a 1965 essay by psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques, titled ‘Death and the Mid-Life Crisis,’” explains Fitzgerald. “Setiya indicates that his intended audience goes beyond the stereotypical; rather, the book is for ‘anyone coping with the irreversibility of time.’” 

Prof. Kieran Setiya speaks Sean Illing, host of Vox’s The Gray Area podcast, about how philosophy can be used as a tool when handling midlife crises. “There’s a real continuity between the literary and human description of phenomena like grief and philosophical reflection,” says Setiya. “Because often what philosophical reflection provides is less a proof that you should live this way and more concepts with which to articulate your experience and then structure and guide how you relate to reality. And seen that way, we can understand how philosophy can operate as self-help.”

Ms. Magazine reporter Kalindi Vora spotlights Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller and the legacy of her work in the field of science. “Through her work, [Keller] showed that objectivity, the key value of the sciences, is in fact always partially subjective,” writes Vora. “Her legacy demonstrates that diversifying the sciences will improve research and discovery.”

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, whose “studies on gender and science, the role of language in shaping how we see and study the world,” and analysis of key concepts in modern biology contributed to the history and philosophy of modern biology, has died at age 87, reports Marga Vicedo for Nature. Keller “proposed abandoning the idea that genes are master molecules that provide the blueprints for and direct the development of an organism,” writes Vicedo. Keller also showed how language, including people’s choice of metaphors, influences the directions of scientific research.”

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, “scientist, feminist scholar, and author of influential publications on genetics, developmental biology and scientific language,” has died at 87, reports Angela N. H. Creager for Science. “After training in physics and working in mathematical biology, Evelyn turned her attention to understanding how societal constructs, especially gender, guide science,” writes Creager. “She brought feminist insights into the history and philosophy of biology and sparked broader interdisciplinary conversations about the role of metaphor and rhetoric in science.”

Professor Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, a MacArthur genius grant recipient, “theoretical physicist, philosopher and writer who viewed science through a feminist lens,” has died at 87, reports Georgina Ferry for The Guardian. Keller’s work explored “how the practice of science had come to be perceived as intrinsically masculine, and to think about what a gender-neutral science might look like,” writes Ferry. 

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, a MacArthur genius grant winner who brought attention to gender bias in science has died at 87, writes Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “She was an icon,” says Prof. Sherry Turkle. Turkle notes that Keller’s “analysis was profound because you realized that the very words that you used to talk about doing an experiment — or learning, or what it meant to understand — was deeply gendered.”

Prof. Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, who was known for her work as a “theoretical physicist, a mathematical biologist and, beginning in the late 1970s, a feminist theorist who explored the way gender pervades and distorts scientific inquiry,” has died, reports Clay Risen for The New York Times. “Keller trained as a physicist and focused much of her early work on applying mathematical concepts to biology,” writes Risen. “But as the feminist movement took hold, she began to think critically about how ideas of masculinity and femininity had affected her profession.”

The Boston Globe Editorial Board spotlights The Educational Justice Institute at MIT (TEJI), which offers educational opportunities to incarcerated individuals. “The two worlds of corrections and education really don’t understand each other well,” says Lee Perlman, co-director of TEJI and a lecturer at MIT. “There’s a real culture clash between them.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Heitman highlights Prof. Alan Lightman’s book, “The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science.” Heitman writes Lightman’s “gift for distilling complex ideas and emotions to their bright essence quickly wins the day.” He adds that Lightman “belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and, in spite of their prodding, or perhaps because of it, stir up fresh embers of wonder.”

Prof. Kieran Setiya reviews “And Finally: Matters of Life and Death” by Henry Marsh for The New York Times. “Many years ago, Marsh read philosophy at Oxford University, but he left for the more practical world of medicine after a year,” writes Setiya. “He finds himself returning in this book to philosophical questions about consciousness and fear of death, though he does so through narrative, not argument, his skills honed by years of storytelling as a clinician recounting case histories.”

Financial Times reporter Jonathan Derbyshire spotlights “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” by Prof. Kieran Setiya. “But that doesn’t mean either that ‘Life Is Hard’ is a self-help book, and it’s all the better and more interesting for it,” writes Derbyshire. “Setiya warns readers at the outset that they are not going to find in it ‘five tips for overcoming grief’ or ‘how to succeed without even trying.’”

Prof. Kieran Setiya’s book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way,” has been named one of The Economist’s best books of 2022. In the book, Setiya makes the case that “suffering need not dimmish or spoil a good life,” writes The Economist.

Boston.com reporter Clara McCourt spotlights how three MIT students - Jack Cook ‘22, Matthew Kearney and Jupneet K. Singh - have been selected as Rhodes Scholars. “The selected students — 32 in total — will go to Oxford University in England next October to pursue wide-ranging graduate degrees," writes McCourt, "with two or three years of study free of charge.”