David Sepkoski

I am a historian of science specializing in the history of the modern natural sciences. Most of my recent work has centered on the conceptual and institutional history of “paleobiology,” a movement in twentieth century paleontology emphasizing theoretical, quantitative approaches to evolutionary study of the fossil record. I have published three books: a major study of the history of paleobiology, titled Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (University of Chicago Press, 2012), an edited volume collecting original essays on the history and philosophy of paleobiology, The Paleobiological Revolution: Essays on the Growth of Modern Paleontology (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and a monograph on seventeenth-century mathematics and theories of representation, Nominalism and Constructivism in Seventeenth-Century Mathematical Philosophy (Routledge, 2007).

Before coming to the MPIWG I held faculty positions at Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where I was most recently an Associate Professor of History. One of my current projects is a study of the development of data practices and databases in paleontology, which is an attempt to think through some of the issues surrounding the emergence of the "data-driven" sciences in the twentieth century. As part of this project, I am co-editor (with Christine von Oertzen and Elena Aronova) of a forthcoming volume of Osiris on "Histories of Data" (2017) that is part of the Historicizing Big Data working group.  My own contribution is to examine data practices in paleontology and other natural history disciplines over the past two hundred years in an attempt to trace both continuities and ruptures in the practice, material culture, and epistemologies of data in modern natural science.  Beyond the Osiris project, I am involved with collaborations at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago investigating the relationship between collections and databases, in both historical and current contexts. 

I am also writing a book, tentatively titled Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity, which is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.  This book is an intellectual and cultural history of extinction that situates the history of paleontological and biological ideas about extinction within the science and politics of biodiversity and endangerment. This project examines the history and cultural impact of ideas about extinction from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. While grounded in the history of biology, it helps contextualize the modern fascination with extinction, endangerment, and diversity across disciplines and in public political discourse.