UCI doctoral programs grab top spots in Philosophical Gourmet Report for 2017-18

The School of Social Sciences’ graduate program in logic & philosophy of science and the School of Humanities’ graduate program in philosophy have done well in the 2017-18 Philosophical Gourmet Report, which assesses the quality and reputation of Ph.D. programs in philosophy throughout the English-speaking world. The PGR provides both overall and specialty rankings based on the results of a survey completed by about 550 philosophers. UCI was named among the top 10 globally in 10 specialty areas, garnering No. 1 in three: general philosophy of science; philosophy of mathematics; and decision, rational choice & game theory. The university was third in philosophy of physics; fourth in mathematical logic; and ninth in epistemology and medieval philosophy. It placed 10th in philosophy of biology, philosophy of social sciences and 20th-century continental philosophy. “In addition to being at the very top of the field, our programs are impressive for their reach across disciplines as diverse as physics, biology and finance,” said Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences.

“With such top scholars in the epistemology field as Sven Bernecker, Annalisa Coliva, Margaret Gilbert, Duncan Pritchard and Karl Schafer, among our many other distinguished philosophy colleagues, UCI is leading the way to new and better understandings of how we can know,” said Georges Van Den Abbeele, dean of the School of Humanities. “In an era of ‘fake news’ and bias against the tenets of scientific evidence, the urgency of leading-edge work in epistemology cannot be overestimated.”