Franz M. Wuketits


Franz Manfred Wuketits was an Austrian biologist, university teacher and epistemologist. He wrote extensively on epistemology, the history and theory of biology, evolution theory, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary epistemology and sociobiology.
Wuketits co-founded the Austrian citizen initiative "Mein Veto" which campaigns against state encroachment in areas of personal liberty and morality. The Initiative is particularly well supported among Austria's relatively large Intellectual class, and includes among its financial backers the tobacco corporation BAT.

Life

Between 1973 and 1978 Wuketits studied zoology, paleontology, philosophy and scientific theory at the University of Vienna. He received his doctorate in 1978, and progressed, still at Vienna, to a habilitation qualification in 1980 with a paper entitled "Scientific theory with particular reference to the Life sciences"
In 1982 he received national recognition in the form of the award of the Austrian Prize for Scientific Journalism.
From 1987 till 2004 he was employed at the University of Graz where he taught the philosophy of biology. He also had guest professorships at several other universities including the Vienna University of Technology and, in Palma de Majorca, at the University of the Balearic Islands.
Since 2002 he was on the board of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Lower Austria. He was a member of the scientific advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation which has as its mission "Support of Evolutionary Humanism". He also belongs to "Free Academy" in Berlin and to Vienna's Library Platform initiative. Other roles have included providing scientific input for the Kapfenberg Summer Academy till 2008.
For many years he was a co-producer/editor of the journal of the :de:Gesellschaft für kritische Philosophie Nürnberg|"Gesellschaft für kritische Philosophie Nürnberg", Aufklärung & Kritik which promotes free thought and humanist philosophy. He was on the editorial/advisory board of various other journals and publications. From 2005 until 2008 he was also the editor of Bioscop, the journal of the Austrian Biologist Association.

Wuketits on free will:

We have only the illusion of free will. An illusion that has developed over the course of human evolution. In daily life we do not notice that it is an illusion. We are not constantly evaluating whether free will is behind what we do or do not do.
........Each of us is to some extent predefined, on the one hand through the evolution of our species. All our activities arise from abilities that come from our evolutionary history. The priority here is always to survive and to reproduce. The cultural elements are merely refinements of underlying evolutionary strategies.
The second element is the individual biography. The older we get, the more we drag around our experiences, influences, desires, hopes, anxieties. We cannot separate ourselves from these. All the decisions that we take we take on the basis of factors deriving from this evolutionary history and our individual histories .''

Published works

This list only partially complete.