Prof Menachem Fisch
Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science
Tel Aviv University
Senior Permanent Fellow
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, Goethe University,
Ra'anana, Israel
Biography
Biographical information is not available at present.
Biography
Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor of History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Senior Fellow of the Goethe University Frankfurt's Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg.
He is former President of the Israel Society for History and Philosophy of Science, and former Chair of the National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science at the Israel Academy of Science.
He has held visiting research positions at Queen’s College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Dibner Institute for Advanced Study in the History of Science and Technology, MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Collegium Budapest, and the Frankfurt University, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Bad Homburg.
He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of the talmudic literature, and the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. His current work explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the possibilities of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, the historiography of scientific framework transitions, and the theo-political roots of Israel's retreat from the values of political Zionism.
He is author of: William Whewell Philosopher of Science (Oxford, 1991); Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Indiana, 1997); “A Modest Proposal: Toward a Religious Politics of Epistemic Humility”, Journal of Human Rights (2003); “Canon, controverse et réforme; une réflexion sur l'autre voix du judaisme talmudique”, Les Cahiers du judaisme (2005); “Diversity, Tolerance, Sovereignty”, in M. Walzer (ed.), Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton, 2006); "Taking the Linguistic Turn Seriously", The European Legacy (2008); "Judaism, and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science", in J.M. van der Meer and S. Mandelbrote (eds.), Nature & Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present, (Brill, 2008); "Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency", The Monist (2010); The View from Within: Normativity and the Limits of Self-Criticism (with Y. Benbaji), (Notre Dame, 2011); “Babbage’s Two Lives”, The British for the History of Science (2013); “Science, Religion, and Rationality – A Neo-Hegelian Approach”, The Toronto Journal of Theology (2013); “How and Why I Write History of Science”, Science in Context, (2013); “Judaism and the Religious Value of Diversity and Dialogue: Drafting a Jewish Response to Nostra Aetate”, in S. Alkier, M. Schneider, Ch. Wiese (eds.), Diversität - Differenz - Dialogoizität: Religion in Pluralen Kontexten (de Gruyter, 2014); Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency (Chicago, 2017), Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew), Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2019 (Hebrew), (Bar Ilan, 2019), “Job and the Bible’s Theo-Poliical Divide”, Religions (2019), 40. “Bossy Matrons and Forced Marriages: Talmudic Confrontationalism and its Philosophical Significance, Open Philosophy, 2020, and The Enemy Within: Political Zionism and its Faithful Adversaries (Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press (forthcoming) 2021
In 2016 a volume dedicated to his work, entitled Menachem Fisch: The Rationality of Religious Dispute, was published by Brill as Vol. 18 of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, (eds. H. Samuelson-Tiroshi and A. W. Hughes), and in 2020, a collection of engagements with his work entitled: Changing One's Mind: Philosophy, Religion And Science, (eds. Y. Schwartz, P. Franks and C. Wiese), was published as a special issue of Open Philosophy (3, 2020)..
Honoraria Titles
Honorary Doctorate, The Goethe University Frankfurt 2017
Major Prizes
Alexander von Hombuldt Research Award 2016
Religion, Philosophy & History Interests
Ethics, History of Religion, History of Science, Judaism, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
Science & Technology Interests
Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, Mathematics, Physics
Website
https://menachemfisch.academia.edu/
Publications
Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture,
Indiana University Press 1997
William Whewell: A Composite Portrait (edited volume)
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991
Editors: Menachem Fisch and S.J. Schaffer
William Whewell Philosopher of Science,
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991
The View from Within: Normativity and the Limits of Self-Criticism
University of Notre Dame Press 2011
Co-authors: Yitzak Benbaji
Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency
University of Chicago Press 2017
Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew)
Bar Ilan University Press 2019
The Enemy Within: Political Zionism and its Faithful Adversaries (Hebrew)
Tel Aviv University Press forthcoming 2021
Dialogues of Reason: Science, Politics, Religion (The Dagmar Westberg Lectures 2020, with Responses by Julie E. Cooper, Lorraine Daston, Moritz Epple, Suzanne Last Stone, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Ti
Echter Verlag forthcoming 2021
“Faith Reason and Dialogue: Science’s Great Debt to Christianity and Potential Debt to Judaism – A Response to Y. Gingras, Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue, Cambridge: Polity Press, 20
2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-019-00388-z
“Gulliver and the Rabbis: Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud”
2019
Volume:10 (3)
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10030228
"Judaism, and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science"
Brill 2008
Editors:Jitse .M. van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote
Volume:Nature & Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700-Present, vol.II
Pages:525-567
