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John Dupré (1952-Present)
John Dupré is a British Philosopher born in 1952 and focuses on general philosophy of science and Philosophy of biology. -
Education and Early Career
John Dupré earned his Ph. D in Philosophy at Cambridge in 1981 and was then a junior research fellow at St. Johns College in Oxford from 1981 to 1982. He then moved to the United States where he taught at the Philosophy department of Stanford University until 1996. -
“The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science”
Dupré published his first book title “The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science” in 1993 in which he proposes that reductionism is not a plausible way of viewing scientific fields.Reductionism was the paradigm of viewing scientific fields of study in a way that everything is reducible to physical causes.This book sets the groundwork for Dupré’s later work in philosophy and is his idea of viewing scientific ideas as processes and not all encompassing facts. -
Return the United Kingdom
In 1996 Dupré returned to the United Kingdom where he was a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck college and the University of London. He also served as a senior research fellow at Exeter. -
Egenis
In 2002 Dupré became the director of Egenis the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society where he has focused on genetics and genomics and their interpretation and the impact they have on society. In 2008 Dupré, in collaboration with Barry Barnes, published the book "Genomes and What to Make of Them" in which he outlines the implications that these ever-expanding fields have and will have on society in the future. -
Philosophy of Biology
In his YouTube video Dupré briefly explains reductionism that was and still is a major view of the scientific fields and then goes on to explain the importance of why philosophy of science and science itself should take a pluralistic model. Dupré goes on to explain the types of conceptual misunderstandings that can arise from a deterministic viewpoint and proposes instead the idea of viewing ideas processes. YouTube -
Process Ontology
From 2013 to 2018 Dupré worked on a project in which he focused on why a process focused study of biology is better for understanding than the traditional substance-based ontology. In his book "Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology" he explains how a process-based ontology allows scientists and students of science to better grasp the information by thinking in terms of processes that can take place instead of just generally applying of rules to things.
