David Stump

David Stump

Professor Emeritus

Faculty Emeritus
Socials

Biography

David J. Stump is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco. A native Californian, he was educated at the University of California and Northwestern University. He is co-editor, with Peter Galison, of The Disunity of Science, and is author of journal articles on Poincaré, Duhem, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and general philosophy of science. His research is centered on late 19th and early 20th century philosophy and science and the exchange between the two, especially in physics, mathematics, and logic.

His teaching interests focus on the late 19th and early 20th century and include the philosophy of science, logic, pragmatism and the development of analytic philosophy. David is married and has two grown children. He enjoys travel, hiking, museums and reading popular accounts of science and technology. He refuses to watch television but is a fan of NPR and alternative radio programming.

Appointments

  • President, International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.
  • Program Director, Honors Program in the Humanities
  • Professor, University of San Francisco, 9/2007 - present
  • Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, 6/2002-6/2005
  • Visiting Professor, University of Vienna (Austria) International Summer University, 2001
  • Associate Professor (tenured), University of San Francisco, 9/1997- 8/2007
  • Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco, 8/1992-8/1997
  • Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, University of California, San Diego, 9/1991-8/1992
  • NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University, 7/1990-6/1991
  • Lecturer, California State University, Long Beach, 1/1988-1/1990

Education

  • PhD, Northwestern University
  • BA, UC Berkeley

Awards & Distinctions

  • Visiting Scholar, Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires en sciences humaines et sociales, Université Paul Valery, Montpellier, France, 2019-2020

  • Visiting Scholar, Archives Henri Poincaré, University of Lorraine, France, Fall 2014

  • Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Fall 2012

  • NEH Chair in the Humanities, University of San Francisco, 2007-2008

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Science Studies Program, 1991-1992 University of California, San Diego

  • NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Science, Technology and Society, 1990-1991 Senior Sponsor: Peter Galison; completed at Stanford University

Selected Publications

  • Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science: Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori New York and London: Routledge, 2015, released in paperback 2018.

  • Science and Hypothesis: The Complete Text by Henri Poincaré, a new translation by Mélanie Frappier, Andrea Smith, and David J. Stump; Forward by David J. Stump. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2017.

  • The Kantian Elements in Arthur Pap’s Philosophy” Journal of Transcendental Philosophy (2021) 21(1).

  • “Ontological Relativity” in Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism, Martin Kusch, ed. New York and London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 341-348.