Susan G. Sterrett
Susan G. Sterrett is the Curtis D. Gridley Distinguished Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. She earned an undergraduate degree in engineering at Cornell University in 1977, after which she worked as an engineer for several years. She completed degrees in Mathematics (M.A.) and Philosophy (M.A., Ph.D.) at the University of Pittsburgh, completing her doctorate in December 1999, with a dissertation entitled How Beliefs Make A Difference. During graduate school, she also wrote and published Sounds Like Light: Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity and Mach's Work in Acoustics and Aerodynamics She then taught at Duke University. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Foundation fellowship for work on Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World, published by Penguin in 2005. Other publications include articles on Darwin's use of analogy, on Wittgenstein and gramophone records, on Alan Turing and the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and on the use of models in science.
She spent a term at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in Spring 2010, then taught at Carnegie Mellon University while finishing Three Views of Logic: Mathematics, Philosophy, Computer Science, co-authored with the computer scientist Donald W. Loveland and the mathematician Richard E. Hodel.
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How mathematics figures differently in exact solutions, simulations, and physical models
(Springer Nature, 2023-03-29)The role of mathematics in scientific practice is too readily relegated to that of formulating equations that model or describe what is being investigated, and then finding solutions to those equations. I survey the role ... -
The Genius of the 'Original Imitation Game' Test
(Springer, 2020-10-29)Twenty years ago in "Turing's Two Tests for Intelligence" I distinguished two distinct tests to be found in Alan Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence": one by then very well-known, the other neglected. ... -
Physically similar systems - A history of the concept
(Springer Nature, 2017)The concept of similar systems arose in physics and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth ... -
Experimentation on analogue models
(Springer Nature, 2017)Analogue models are actual physical setups used to model something else. They are especially useful when what we wish to investigate is difficult to observe or experiment upon due to size or distance in space or time; for ... -
Turing on the integration of human and machine intelligence
(Springer, 2016)Philosophical discussion of Alan Turing’s writings on intelligence has mostly revolved around a single point made in a paper published in the journal Mind in 1950. This is unfortunate, for Turing’s reflections on machine ... -
Physically similar systems: A history of the concept
(Springer, 2017)The concept of similar systems arose in physics, and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth ... -
Experimentation on analogue models
(2015-05-31)Analogue models are actual physical setups used to model something else. They are especially useful when what we wish to investigate is difficult to observe or experiment upon due to size or distance in space or time: ... -
Physical pictures: Engineering models circa 1914 and in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus"
(Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002)Today I want to talk about an element in the milieu in which Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that has not been recognized to date: the generalization of the methodology of experimental scale ... -
How beliefs make a difference
(University of Pittsburgh, 1999-11-15)How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how ... -
Kinds of models
(2003-03-20)In this paper, I survey a broad variety of models with an eye to asking what kind of model each is in the following sense: in virtue of what is each of them regarded as a model? It will be seen that when we classify models ... -
Similarity and dimensional analysis
(Elsevier/North-Holland, 2009)The importance of similarity in comprehending things and reasoning about them was recognized before the time of Plato. Similarity continues to be important in philosophy, science, and technology to this day. The historical ... -
Physical models and fundamental laws: Using one piece of the world to tell about another
(Springer-Verlag, 2002-03-01)In this paper I discuss the relationship between model, theories, and laws in the practice of experimental scale modeling. The methodology of experimental scale modeling, also known as physical similarity, differs ... -
How many thoughts can fit in the form of a proposition?
(2004--06-2)I argue here that Frege’s eventual view on the relation between sentences and the thoughts they express is that, ideally, a sentence expresses exactly one thought, and a thought is expressed by exactly one (canonical) ... -
Frege and Hilbert on the Foundations of Geometry
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Models of machines and models of phenomena
(Taylor & Francis, 2006-01)Experimental engineering models have been used both to model general phenomena, such as the onset of turbulence in fluid flow, and to predict the performance of machines of particular size and configuration in particular ... -
Three views of logic: Mathematics, Philosophy, Computer Science
(Princeton University Press, 2014)Demonstrating the different roles that logic plays in the disciplines of computer science, mathematics, and philosophy, this concise undergraduate textbook covers select topics from three different areas of logic: proof ... -
Kites, models and logic: Susan Sterrett investigates models in Wittgenstein's world
(SimplyCharly.com, 2008)This is the text of Dr. Sterrett's replies to an interviewer's questions for simplycharly.com, a website with interviews by academics on various authors, philosophers, and scientists. -
Historical context and Philosophy of Science: a reply to Peter Simons' 'Coincidence and Kite-Flying'
(2009-03-04)This essay responds to a review of my book "Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World" by Peter Simons that appears in the March 2009 issue of the journal Metascience. The revised version ... -
Too many instincts: contrasting philosophical views on intelligence in humans and non-humans
(Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2002)This paper investigates the following proposal about machine intelligence: that behaviour in which a habitual response that would have been inappropriate in a certain unfamiliar situation is overridden and replaced by a ... -
Bringing up Turing's 'Child-Machine'
(Springer, Berlin, 2012)Turing wrote that the "guiding principle" of his investigation into the possibility of intelligent machinery was "The analogy [of machinery that might be made to show intelligent behavior] with the human brain." [10] In ...
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