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Alumni

David Sepkoski

Senior Research Scholar, Group Leader (Sep 2012-Aug 2018)

PhD

I am a historian of science specializing in the history of the modern natural sciences. Most of my recent work has centered on the conceptual and institutional history of “paleobiology,” a movement in twentieth century paleontology emphasizing theoretical, quantitative approaches to evolutionary study of the fossil record. I have published three books: a major study of the history of paleobiology, titled Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (University of Chicago Press, 2012), an edited volume collecting original essays on the history and philosophy of paleobiology, The Paleobiological Revolution: Essays on the Growth of Modern Paleontology (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and a monograph on seventeenth-century mathematics and theories of representation, Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy (Routledge, 2007).

Before coming to the MPIWG I held faculty positions at Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where I was most recently an Associate Professor of History. One of my current projects is a study of the development of data practices and databases in paleontology, which is an attempt to think through some of the issues surrounding the emergence of the "data-driven" sciences in the twentieth century. As part of this project, I am co-editor (with Christine von Oertzen and Elena Aronova) of a forthcoming volume of Osiris on "Histories of Data" (2017) that is part of the Historicizing Big Data working group.  My own contribution is to examine data practices in paleontology and other natural history disciplines over the past two hundred years in an attempt to trace both continuities and ruptures in the practice, material culture, and epistemologies of data in modern natural science.  Beyond the Osiris project, I am involved with collaborations at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago investigating the relationship between collections and databases, in both historical and current contexts. 

I am also writing a book, tentatively titled Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity, which is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.  This book is an intellectual and cultural history of extinction that situates the history of paleontological and biological ideas about extinction within the science and politics of biodiversity and endangerment. This project examines the history and cultural impact of ideas about extinction from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. While grounded in the history of biology, it helps contextualize the modern fascination with extinction, endangerment, and diversity across disciplines and in public political discourse.

Projects

No current projects were found for this scholar.

A Natural History of Data

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Extinction and the Value of Diversity

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Historicizing Big Data

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The Sciences of the Archive

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Selected Publications

Sepkoski, David (2015). “Extinction, diversity, and endangerment.” In Endangerment, biodiversity and culture, ed. N. Dias, 62–86. New York: Routledge.

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Sepkoski, David (2014). “Paleontology at the ‘high table’?  Popularization and disciplinary status in recent paleontology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part C, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (1): 133–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.11.006.

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Sepkoski, David (2014). “Two lives in biology. Review of: Dawkins, Richard: An appetite for wonder : the making of a scientist, a memoir. New York: HarperCollins Publishers 2013. Review of: Wilson, Edward O.: Letters to a young scientist. New York: Liveright Publishing 2013.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 89 (2): 151–156. https://doi.org/10.1086/676047.

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Sepkoski, David (2013). “Paleontology and Evolutionary Interpretations of the Fossil Record.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, ed. M. Ruse. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Sepkoski, David (2012). Rereading the fossil record : the growth of paleobiology as an evolutionary discipline. Chicago [u.a.]: University of Chicago Press.

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Sepkoski, David (2009). The Paleobiological Revolution: Essays on the Growth of Modern Paleontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Sepkoski, David (2007). Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy. Routledge Studies in Seventeenth Century Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge.

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Past Events

Institute's Colloquium

Leibniz Editions and Narrative Repetition in the History of Science

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Institute's Colloquium

Secundum Quid and Contingentia: Scholastic Concepts in Early Modern Physics

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Institute's Colloquium

Darwin on Paper: From Rags to Wood-Pulp

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Institute's Colloquium

The Future of Academic Publishing

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Institute's Colloquium

Hermann Bahr and the Interview–between Journalism and Social Sciences

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Institute's Colloquium

Happy Endings: Narratives of Reproduction in Late Imperial Chinese Medical Cases

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Institute's Colloquium

Asylums and the Data of Human Heredity

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Institute's Colloquium

How Physicians Know: From Ars Excerpendi to the Ditto Machine

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Institute's Colloquium

Herculean and Promethean Adventures on Long Journeys to the Future

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Institute's Colloquium

Plant Tributes and Trials in the French Empire, 1670–1730

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Institute's Colloquium

From Collections to Databases: Theory and Practice in Modern Paleontological Data Analysis

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News & Press

Article by David Sepkoski, Department II Senior Research Scholar, on paleontology's lessons for AI and machine learning

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“Daten zum Stapeln”—Christine von Oertzen, Elena Aronova, and David Sepkoski in MaxPlanckForschung on the

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Christine von Oertzen, Elena Aronova, and David Sepkoski on the history of Big Data in science and societ

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