Elisabeth Lloyd
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Elisabeth Anne Lloyd (born 3 September 1956, Morristown, New Jersey, USA) is a philosopher of biology. She currently holds the Arnold and Maxine Tanis Chair of History and Philosophy of Science and is also Professor of Biology, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Affiliated Faculty Scholar at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and Adjunct Faculty at the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior.
She earned her BA in Science and Political Theory from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1980, summa cum laude. After some graduate study under the supervision of Stephen Jay Gould in the Department of Genetics at Harvard University in 1983, Lloyd studied under Bas van Fraassen at Princeton University for a PhD in Philosophy 1980-84.
She worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of California, San Diego, 1985-88; Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, 1988-90, Associate Professor, 1990-97, Professor, 1997-99, University of California, Berkeley; Affiliated Faculty, History and Philosophy of Science Programme, University of California, Davis, 1990-1998.
Her recent book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm," was widely discussed in the scholarly and popular press, including Isis, Nature and The New York Times. The book criticizes what it portrays as politically conservative and anti-scientific bias infecting much of evolutionary psychology. It uses as a case study leading evolutionary-psychological explanations of the origins of the human female orgasm. The book received so much attention it was lampooned on an episode of Saturday Night Live because its title sounds like a racy version of a Hardy Boys novel.
[edit] Published Works
- The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory, Greenwood Press, 1988 (Reprinted Princeton University Press, 1994 ISBN 0691000468).
- Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (co-edited with Evelyn Fox Keller), Harvard University Press, 1992 (reprinted 1998 ISBN 0674503139).
- The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Harvard University Press, 2005 (new edition, 2006 ISBN 0674022467).
- Science, Politics and Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 2008 (ISBN 9780521865708).
