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Dear ISHPSSB Listserv,
Dick Burian asked me to pass along to you the
following memorial notice for Marjorie Grene. A
second notice will follow in a few weeks,
describing Marjorie's role in the founding of ISH
and her influence on the Society and some of its
early members.
-RLM
In Memoriam Marjorie Grene
Marjorie Grene passed away March 16 at age 98
after a brief illness. Marjorie Glicksman Grene,
born Dec. 13, 1910, was an important historian of
philosophy (with books on Aristotle, Descartes,
and various existentialist philosophers),
epistemologist (with a special emphasis on
perception and the contextual relations of
knowers to the world around them) and philosopher
of science, especially biology, on which she
wrote several books. After obtaining a
bachelor's degree in zoology at Wellesley, she
studied with such figures as Heidegger and
Jaspers as an American-German exchange student
1931-33 and David Prall, Alfred North Whitehead,
and C.I. Lewis at Harvard. Her doctorate in
philosophy was awarded by Radcliffe in 1935 since
women were not then formally admitted to Harvard.
From 1937-1944 she was an instructor at the
University of Chicago, where she participated in
the seminars run by Rudolf Carnap and Carl
(Peter) Hempel. From 1944 to1957 she continued
to publish, but her main occupations were raising
her family and helping to run a farm, first in
the US, then in Ireland. In 1950 she met Michael
Polanyi and served as his research assistant
(largely by correspondence) for the conversion of
his 1950 Gifford Lectures into his well-known
book, Personal Knowledge. Thanks in part to this
work, she held temporary positions at the
University of Manchester (1957-8) and then at the
University of Leeds (1958-60),before becoming a
Lecturer in Philosophy at Queens University,
Belfast (1960-65). She returned to the US, first
as a faculty member, then as Chair of the
Department of Philosophy at the University of
California, Davis, which she built into a major
department, with strengths in history of
philosophy and philosophy of science.
Philosophically, one of the most salient threads
in her work is her view of philosophy as a
continuous dialogue involving the thought of all
major philosophers in the main philosophical
traditions, with a strong contextualist twist.
She insisted on the necessity of interpreting
philosophers both within the context of their own
times and places (else one would misunderstand
them in important ways) and from the perspective
of one's own context (in which their thought is
brought to bear on a new set of problems,
highlighted by a different physical, social,
technological, and conceptual background). In
epistemology, she was firmly anti-Cartesian,
insisting that humans are embodied beings whose
characteristics are built in interaction with and
in reaction to their physical and social
environment. She maintains that human beings
should be understood in light of their animal
lineage and in terms of an analysis of perception
greatly influenced by the perceptual psychology
of J.J. Gibson.
In philosophy of biology, she was influenced by
several European biologists (e.g., Adolf
Portmann, Bernhard Rensch, and Rupert Riedl) and
many colleagues at UC Davis. Of special
importance was her encounter with the
evolutionary synthesis, especially in the work of
Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky (who spent the
end of his career at UC Davis), and her Davis
colleague G. Ledyard Stebbins. In keeping with
her larger philosophical views, she treated
biological knowledge as a dialectic involving the
history of biology and the shifting problems and
technologies encountered in different settings.
In particular, she insisted on the need to
include the treatment of problems of form,
function, and evolution as part of the setting
for the problems encountered in all current
biological disciplines - and the problem of human
well-being in dealing with biomedical sciences.
She ran at least five summer seminars for the NEH
and two summer institutes for the Council of
Philosophical Studies and was influential in
founding the informal group that eventually
formed the International Society for History,
Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, of
which she and Ernst Mayr were Honorary Presidents.
Due to her foreshortened career, after her
mandatory retirement from UC Davis Prof. Grene
found it financially and intellectually desirable
to continue working in academic settings. From
fall 1978 until spring 1986 she held visiting
positions in twelve colleges and universities
plus a research fellowship (1985-86) at the
American Museum of Natural History. In 1988,
when her daughter Ruth moved from Cornell
University to Virginia Tech, Prof. Grene moved
from Ithaca, NY to Blacksburg, VA where she was
named as an Honorary University Distinguished
Professor and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and
Science Studies at Virginia Tech. She played a
significant role in both of these units for many
years, participating in colloquia, tutoring
students, and collaborating with various
colleagues. She remained intellectually active
until about 2005, publishing her last major book,
The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History,
written with David Depew, with Cambridge
University Press in 2004. She served as the
President of the Pacific Division of the American
Philosophical Association (1971-72), the Phi Beta
Kappa Romanell Lecturer in 1991-92, delivering
the lectures at the UC Davis, was awarded
honorary degrees by Tulane University and the
University of Dijon, and received many additional
honors. Several Festschrifts have been devoted
to her work including volume 29 of the Library of
Living Philosophers, the first to be devoted to
the work of a woman (L.E. Hahn. and R.E. Auxier
(eds.), The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, Chicago
and La Salle, IL,: Open Court, 2002), and J.
Gayon and R.M. Burian (eds.), 2007, Conceptions
de la Science: Hier, Aujourd'hui, Demain. Hommage
à Marjorie Grene, Brussels: Ousia.
Marjorie Grene is survived by her daughter Ruth,
who is on the Virginia Tech faculty in Plant
Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, her son
Nicholas, who is the Professor of English
Literature in the School of English, Trinity
College, Dublin, his wife Eleanor, six
grandchildren, Sophia, Hannah, Jessica, Clement,
Nick and Lucy Grene and one great-granddaughter,
Nazyia Terry.
As of this date, memorial plans are somewhat
fluid, but Prof. Grene was cremated and her
remains have been returned to Ireland. To allow
her Irish family to participate in the memorial
service in Blacksburg, a memorial service is
tentatively scheduled for May 3. Beyond that,
decisions are still being shaped about the
family's wishes. Inquiries can be sent to the
Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech.
Richard Burian
Virginia Tech
*** End of announcement
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Professor Roberta L. Millstein
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History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology
<http://www.ishpssb.org/>
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