Faculty/Staff

• Associate Professor, Philosophy

First Year at Xavier University:

2003

Degrees:

• Ph.D. (Boston University)

Expertise:

Philosophy of Science, Chinese Philosophy

Biography:

Tongdong Bai holds B.S (nuclear physics) and Master (philosophy of science) degrees from Peking (Beijing) University, China, and a Ph.D. (philosophy) degree from Boston University. He also spent one year at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT as a graduate student fellow. In his dissertation (thesis advisor: Prof. John Stachel), he investigates the relationship between philosophy and physics by examining the ideas of Niels Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli as well as Albert Einstein, especially in the context of the EPR debate. He tries to defend Bohr and Pauli against various anti-realist readings and Einstein against various realist ones. Dr. Bai also tries to bring to his work in the philosophy of physics a broad interest in the study of Wittgenstein, Austin, and Quine, whom he studied with the late Prof. Burton Dreben. Dr. Bai will continue his research of the history of ideas of great physicists (such as Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan, in addition to Einstein, Bohr, and Pauli) and the general conceptual problems in the philosophy of science. Dr. Bai also has a serious interest in political philosophy and Chinese philosophy, two areas in which he hopes to publish in the future. He studied John Rawls with Dreben and some ancient and modern (political) philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Nietzsche with Prof. Stanley Rosen. He plans to dedicate part of his future teaching and research to these thinkers. Moreover, he also plans to apply the “hermeneutic” approach he has learned from Rosen and Dreben to some classical texts in Chinese philosophy, such as Confucius’s Analects.