Dr Charles T. Wolfe

MA New School for Social Research, DEA, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne;
PhD Boston University
Room 437 Carslaw

+61 2 9351 4801

Charles Wolfe works on early modern materialist thought and the history and philosophy of the life sciences (focusing on the concept of organism, medical vitalism, brain and mind, mechanism and monsters), with a particular emphasis on the French Enlightenment (La Mettrie, Diderot). His dissertation dealt with determinist approaches to mind and action in the Radical Enlightenment, and he hopes to bring these two lines of inquiry together in a ‘materialist theory of the self’.

Charles is editing a special issue of the journal Science in Context on the topic of medical vitalism in the Enlightenment, to appear in 2008.

His next projects are two books: one on Determinism and Action in the Radical Enlightenment, to be published in French by the Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure (Lyon), the other provisionally entitled Vitalism Without Metaphysics? Conceptual Foundations of Medical Vitalism in the Enlightenment.

ARC APD: The origins of scientific experimental practices: from the anatomical theatre to the conversations of the Royal Societ (2007-2010)

• “Locke’s Compatibilism: Suspension of Desire or Suspension of Determinism?”, in Joseph Campbell, Michael O’Rourke and Harry Silverstein, eds., Action, Ethics and Responsibility (Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 7). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming 2009.
• “‘Cabinet d’Histoire Naturelle’, or: The Interplay of Nature and Artifice in Diderot’s Naturalism,” Perspectives on Science, forthcoming 2008.
• “De-ontologizing the brain (from the fictional self to the social brain),” Ctheory, 30:1, Winter 2007.
• “Determinism/Spinozism in the Radical Enlightenment: the cases of Anthony Collins and Denis Diderot,” in Pasi Ihalainen et al., eds., Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century, International Review of Eighteenth-Century Studies (IRECS), Vol. 1, Helsinki/Oxford, 2007.
• (ed.), Monsters and Philosophy. London: College Publications, 2005.
• (ed.), Dossier on philosophy of biology, Multitudes 16, Paris, 2004.
• “‘Epicuro-Cartesianism’: La Mettrie’s Materialist Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy,” in Hartmut Hecht, ed., La Mettrie. Ansichte und Einsichte (Proceedings of the La Mettrie Conference, Potsdam, 2001). Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004.

• History and philosophy of the life sciences
• Materialism, determinism, vitalism
• Empiricism and the Scientific Revolution
• Science and literature in the Enlightenment
• Philosophy of mind and neuroscience from Descartes to the present
• Philosophy of science in 20th century France

In December 2007- January 2008 Charles was a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. In April and December 2008 he is organizing a Workshop on ‘The Concept of Organism’ at the IHPST in Paris, and in June 2008 he will be chairing and participating in a panel at HOPOS in Vancouver, on ‘Medical Empiricism in Early Modern Thought’.

Charles is Secretary of the Australasian Association for the History and Philosophy of Science (AAHPSSS).

Charles is the coordinator in the Unit for HPS for the TSP (Talented Students Program) in Science, and is an editor of the Paris-based journal Multitudes