past event

Center on Nanotechnology and Society
1st Annual Nanopolicy Conference
Nanoworld: Toward a Policy for the Human Future

Davis Baird, Ph.D.

Davis Baird is Dean of the South Carolina Honors College and Director of the nanoScience and Technology Studies Group in the University of South Carolina (USC) NanoCenter. His research has focused on the history and philosophy of scientific instruments, those developed for analytical chemistry during the 20th century, and more recently the instruments that make nanotechnology possible. He pursues a familial interest being the son of Walter Baird, co-founder of one of the early developers of spectrographic instrumentation, Baird Associates. Baird leads a National Science Foundation-funded interdisciplinary team of 20 researchers from 10 departments in six colleges at USC, working in cooperation USC's NanoCenter, on the societal and ethical interactions of nanotechnology.

Baird is the author of Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments (University of California Press, 2004) - winner of the 2006 Paul Bunge Prize and Inductive Logic: Inferring the Unknown (Prentice Hall, 1992; Pearson Publishing, 1999). With Alfred Nordmann and Joachim Schummer, he is the co-editor of Discovering the Nanoscale (IOS Press, 2004). He also is co-editor of two collections published in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series: Heinrich Hertz: Classical Physicist, Modern Philosopher (Kluwer, 1994) and Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline (Springer, 2006). He edits Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, and is manager of the listserv, philchem (@listserv.sc.edu) devoted to the philosophy of chemistry.

He received his Ph.D. (1981) from Stanford University's Program in Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language and Logic. In addition, he has an M.A. (1981) from Stanford and a B.A. (1976) from Brandeis University.