William C. Wimsatt (NHC Fellow, 2000–01)

Fellowship Work Summary, 2000–01

William C. Wimsatt rewrote two chapters and the introductory materials, and finished the bibliography for his book, Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality, which has been accepted for publication by Harvard University Press, and researched and wrote a substantial portion of his book on generative entrenchment and cultural evolution. His article, "Functional Organization, Functional Inference, and Functional Analogy," will appear in a volume entitled Functions: New Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, edited by Robert Cummins, André Ariew, and Mark Perlman (Oxford University Press, in press). He co-authored (with Jeffrey Schank) an article "Generative Entrenchment, Modularity and Evolvability: An Apparent Evolutionary Paradox of Frequency Dependent Modules" that is forthcoming in a volume entitled Modularity in Evolution and Development, edited by Gerhard Schlosser and Gunter Wagner (University of Chicago Press, 2002). His paper on "Evolution, Entrenchment, and Innateness" will be included in a forthcoming volume of Proceedings of the Piaget Society Meetings, edited by Terrance Brown and others (Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 2001). He wrote an article, entitled "False Models As Means to Truer Theories: Blending Inheritance in Biological vs. Cultural Evolution," that is forthcoming (2002) in the journal Philosophy of Science.