CAROL CLELAND (PhD, Brown, 1981) arrived at CU Boulder in 1986, after having spent a year on a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information. She is a member of NASA's Institute for Astrobiology and CU's Institute for Cognitive Science.

Areas of Interest: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Logic, and Metaphysics. More specifically, scientific methodology (standards of evidence, historical science, classical experimental science), philosophy of biology (microbiology, astrobiology, definitions of 'life'), causation, space and time, supervenience, events, the Church-Turing Thesis, and the concept of effective procedure.

Current Research: Working on papers in the area of philosophy of science (historical science, microbiology, the nature of life, Darwinian evolution) and a book (The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life: Searching for life as we don't know it) under contract with Cambridge University Press.

For more information, see Professor Cleland's personal website and CV.

• “Epistemological issues in the study of microbial life: alternative biospheres,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (forthcoming).
• “Philosophical issues in natural history, including philosophy of biology and geology,” in Tucker, A. (ed), Blackwell Companions to Philosophy: A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (Oxford: Blackwell).
• “The Church-Turing Thesis: A last vestige of a failed mathematical program, ” in Olszewksi, A., Wolenski, J. and R. Janusz (eds.), Church’s Thesis after Seventy Years. Berlin: Ontos Verlag.
• “Does ‘life’ have a definition?,” (with Christopher Chyba) in Sullivan Baross (ed.), Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• “The Possibility of Alternative Microbial Life on Earth,” (with Shelley Copey) International Journal of Astrobiology 4 (2005): 165-173.
• "The Concept of Computability," Theoretical Computer Science 317 (2004): 209-225.
• “Methodological and Epistemic Differences Between Historical Science and Experimental Science,” Philosophy of Science 69 (2002): 474-496.
• “Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method,” Geology 29 (2001): 987-990.
• “Recipes, Algorithms, and Programs," Minds and Machines 11 (2001): 219-237.