Kenneth Schaffner

Kenneth Schaffner is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also served as University Professor of Philosophy and Psychology and Professor of Psychiatry. He earned his BS in Physics and Philosophy from Brooklyn College in 1961, PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1967 with advisor Ernest Nagel, and MD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. Schaffner's academic career spans multiple institutions, including early teaching at Brooklyn College starting in 1962, positions at the University of Chicago and University of Maryland, and University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, from which he is now emeritus. At Pittsburgh, he chaired the Department of History and Philosophy of Science for decades beginning in the 1970s, served as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science from 1975 to 1980, and co-founded the Center for Medical Ethics, now the Center for Bioethics and Health Law. He analyzed paradigm shifts in immunology, clinical trials in transplant medicine, and contributed to courses on logic problem-solving in clinical diagnosis.

Schaffner's research specializes in ethical and conceptual issues in science and medicine, philosophy of biology, psychiatry, human behavioral and psychiatric genetics, and philosophy of science, including reduction, discovery, and explanation in biology and medicine. Key publications include Nineteenth-Century Aether Theories (1972), Logic of Discovery and Diagnosis in Medicine (editor, 1985), Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine (1993), and Behaving: What's Genetic, What's Not, and Why Should We Care? (2016). His model of theory reduction has significantly influenced philosophy of science and biology. Schaffner received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, Institute for Human Values in Medicine Fellowship in 1977, was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1986, Fellow of the Hastings Center in 1991, and Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry in 1992. He served on the World Psychiatric Association-World Health Organization workgroup advising on the Mental Health Section of the ICD-11.

Professional Email: kfs@pitt.edu