Deepanwita Dasgupta
Deepanwita Dasgupta is currently an associate professor of Philosophy at University of Texas at El Paso. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2010 with a focus on philosophy of science, especially the dynamics of mental modeling present in scientific reasoning. Earlier, she did another Ph.D. in philosophy of language from Jadavpur University, India. Her research interests are in the philosophy of science with an especial focus on the non-Western contexts of science, especially the Indian sub-continent at the turn of the 20th century. Her 2021 book, Creativity from the Periphery, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, presents the story of a nascent physics community in India during 1920-40 in the light of a cognitive-philosophical framework.
Her recent project at the Center is to see if natural philosophy can once again be revived in the teaching and the research contexts of science to create a wisdom-based practice. This project has three immediate goals – to incorporate the ideas of natural philosophy into the teaching and the research processes of science by creating novel teaching modules (for STEM disciplines such as Chemistry and Math), to create innovative Ethical and Responsible Conduct of Research (ERCR) courses that could be team-taught by faculties from the both sides, and to formulate a set of wisdom-based practices that might help us in visualizing a well-ordered science that is linked with multiple traditions of knowledge. Those traditions may hold different ontologies but can perhaps be united on the level of practice. These wisdom-based efforts can help bridge the famous two-cultures gap that now starkly separates the science disciplines from the humanities, even though both live on the same university campuses.
Deepanwita has earlier visited the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen, Norway during summer 2019 with a similar project, and has presented her work at the Inter-University Center, Dubrovnik, and at Cardiff University, UK. At UTEP, she regularly teaches courses on philosophy of science, research ethics courses for the Chemistry and Biology programs, and seeks to promote a conversational interface between the humanities and the sciences.