Sahotra Sarkar | |
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| Born | 1962 (age 60–61) |
| Alma mater | Columbia University University of Chicago |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Conservation biology |
| Institutions | McGill University University of Texas at Austin |
Sahotra Sarkar (born 1962) is an Indian-American professor at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the philosophy of biology.
Sarkar is originally from India where he lived in Darjeeling until 1975. [1] He earned a BA from Columbia University, where he won a Van Amringe Mathematical Prize, [2] and a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago where he worked with William_C._Wimsatt. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (1996–1997), the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (1993–1994), and the Edelstein Centre for the Philosophy of Science (1992). He was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (1997–1998, 2002–2003) and taught at Montreal's McGill University before moving to Texas.
Sarkar is one of the founders of systematic conservation planning within conservation biology, [3] promoting the use of multi-criteria decision analysis and supervising the creation of the ConsNet decision support system. [4] In this context he has advocated participatory environmental planning and strongly criticized the imposition of authoritarian and discriminatory environmental policies on local residents. [5] His laboratory also works on a suite of neglected tropical diseases (or diseases of poverty) including Chagas disease, [6] dengue, [7] leishmaniasis, [8] and tick-borne diseases. [9] [10]
In the philosophy of biology, Sarkar is known for his work on reductionism [11] and criticism of hereditarian thinking in biology [12] as well as the use of informational concepts in molecular biology. [13] In the philosophy of physics Sarkar is known for controversially defending the conventionalism of simultaneity in special relativity (with John Stachel) [14] and suggesting a stochastic modification of quantum dynamics. [15] Earlier in his career he worked in mathematical population genetics where, in collaboration with Wing Ma and Guido Sandri, he was responsible for the standard recursion relation to compute the Luria–Delbrück distribution in bacterial genetics. [16] [17]
Sarkar is also a noted critic of creationism and intelligent design [18] [19] and played an important role in combating attempts to introduce creationism into high school curricula in Texas. [20] [21]
In 2017, Sahotra Sarkar was suspended for a semester after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with students. Although he denied some of the allegations, he admitted to discussing the possibility of one student posing for nude photographs for money. [22] [23] In November 2019, a group of students interrupted a class Sarkar was teaching in order to protest his continued presence at the university. [24]
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle. This theory of knowledge asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.
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John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. He served in the Great War, and obtained the rank of captain. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field, he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute for the rest of his life.
The Vienna Circle of logical empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick. The Vienna Circle had a profound influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy.
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