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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
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