Marga Vicedo is part of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the University of Toronto. She's mainly interested in the history of genetics, evolution, and animal research. Her other areas of expertise include the social and ethical implications of new genetic technologies. In the philosophy of science, she is concerned with the matter of scientific realism. Another area of research is the history of scientific views about human instincts. In a manuscript entitled Human Nature and Mother Love: The Search for the Maternal Instinct, she traces the different views about instinctual behavior from Darwin to the present. Her work on instincts has led her to examine the work of psychologists, such as William James, John Watson and Harry Harlow, and psychoanalysts, especially child psychoanalysts. Professor Vicedo is now completing a history and critical analysis of the Ethological Theory of Attachment Behavior

 

Recent publications:

"Experimentation, Realism, and the Historical Character of Science." In Richard Creath & Jane Maienschein, eds., Biology and Epistemology.Cambridge University Press, 1999.

"The Laws of Heredity and the Rules of Morality: Early Geneticists on Evolution and Ethics." In Jane Maienschein & Michael Ruse, eds., Biology and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 1999.