Philosophy
Boston University College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
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  Alfred I. Tauber
Professor of Philosophy; Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine; Affiliate Faculty, Law, Medicine and Ethics Program
Office: STH 506
E-mail: ait@bu.edu
Personal Website: http://people.bu.edu/ait/
Education: M.D., Tufts Medical School
Interests: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Medicine, History of Science and of Medicine; Director, Center for Philosophy and History of Science

Alfred I. Tauber is Professor of Philosophy at the Boston University Department of Philosophy, Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine, Director of The Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science, and Affiliate Faculty in the Law, Medicine and Ethics Program.

Alfred Tauber is a hematologist and biochemist by training. From his interest in basic immunology, he began a critical examination of modern biology and medicine. These studies have focused on scientific epistemology: positivism, reductionism, and the relationship of facts and values. Dr. Tauber was appointed Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science in 1993. He offers courses in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology and medicine, and American philosophy. As the Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine, Dr. Tauber teaches ethics at the Boston Medical Center.

Aside from over 125 research publications in biochemistry and immunology, Dr. Tauber has published more than 80 papers on 19th and 20th century biomedicine, contemporary science studies, and ethics. He is the author of The Immune Self, Theory or Metaphor? (Cambridge, 1994), Confessions of a Medicine Man, An Essay in Popular Philosophy (MIT 1999), Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing (California 2001), and Patient Autonomy and
the Ethics of Responsibility
(MIT 2005). In addition, he has co-authored Metchnikoff and the Origins of Immunology (Oxford, 1991) and The Generation of Diversity, Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (Harvard, 1997). He has also edited several volumes including The Elusive Synthesis: Science and Aesthetics (Kluwer, 1996), Science and the Quest for Reality (New York University, 1997), and a collaborative translation project, The Evolutionary Biology Papers of Elie Metchnikoff (Kluwer, 2000). On-going projects include further studies in science studies, medical ethics and American Transcendentalism.

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