Advisory Board

Professor Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller, Ph.D., D.Litt., AcSS, FRSA holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology. His latest book is The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism.
 
He is most closely associated with the research program of social epistemology. Originally trained in the history and philosophy of science (Ph.D., 1985, University of Pittsburgh), he is the founder of the research program of social epistemology. It is the name of a quarterly journal he founded with Taylor & Francis in 1987, as well as his first book Social Epistemology (Indiana University Press, 1988). He authored Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents, 2nd edn. (Guilford Press, 1993), Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993; 2nd edn. with James Collier, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), Science (Open University Press and University of Minnesota Press, 1997), The Governance of Science: Ideology and the Future of the Open Society (Open University Press, 2000), Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (University of Chicago Press, 2000); Knowledge Management Foundations (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002); Kuhn vs Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Icon and Columbia University Press, 2003); The Intellectual (Icon 2005); The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies (Routledge, 2006); The New Sociological Imagination (Sage, 2006); The Knowledge Book: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Science and Culture (Acumen, 2007); Science vs Religion? (Polity, 2007); New Frontiers in Science and Technology Studies (Polity, 2007); Dissent over Descent (Icon, 2008); The Sociology of Intellectual Life (Sage, 2009); Science: The Art of Living (Acumen, 2010); and Humanity 2.0: What It Means to Be Human Past, Present and Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
 
Steve has organized two global cyberconferences for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council: one on public understanding of science (1998), and another on peer review in the social sciences (1999). He has spoken in 30 countries, often keynoting professional academic conferences, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts since 1995. He was awarded a D.Litt. by Warwick in 2007 for significant career-long contributions to scholarship. He was appointed to the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology in 2011, and is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. In 2012 he was elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Division I: Humanities).
 
His writings have been translated into twenty languages. His book Kuhn vs Popper was named book of the month (Feb 2005) by the US magazine, Popular Science, The Intellectual was named a book of the year by the UK magazine New Statesman for 2005, and Dissent over Descent was named book of the week by Times Higher Education in July 2008.
 
Steve was UK partner for a Ford Foundation project on the future of higher education, UK partner for an EU FP6 project on the Knowledge Politics of Converging Technologies, and Principal Investigator for an ESRC project on Mimetic Factors on Individual Behaviour. He is active generally in the Science, Politics, and Society research cluster in the department.
 
Since coming to Warwick in 1999, he has supervised several Ph.D. students, taught on the Doctoral Training Programme and the MA in Social Research. He has been convenor of the MA in Philosophy and Social Theory and now teaches on Politics and Social Theory. At the undergraduate level, he has taught the social theory of law, sociology of knowledge and science and, most recently media sociology. He welcomes students working in the sociology of knowledge, history, philosophy and sociology of science, the nature of the university and intellectual life, and normative issues relating to recent developments on the impact of science and technology on the political order, especially concerning our changing conceptions of the biological and what it means to be human.
 
Watch TEDxWarwick — Professor Steve Fuller, Steve Fuller — The Proactionary Imperative — Warwick University, and Being Human in the Information Age — Professor Steve Fuller. Read The Moral Equivalent of War — Steve Fuller, Steve Fuller: it’s time for Humanity 2.0, and Beyond the precautionary principle. Read his Wikipedia profile. Follow his Twitter feed.