In one way or anotherâand often in various waysâall the contributors are indebted to Barry Smith. Some of us were Smithâs students, and took our first steps in academia in the context of collaborative work with him. But even those who have never been, technically speaking, Smithâs students, have nonetheless immensely benefited from his penetrating intelligence. As a matter of fact, in connection to Smith, the categories of âstudentâ, âcolleagueâ, and âcollaboratorâ, exhibit remarkable overlaps. All the contributors are equally grateful to Barry and they dedicate this volume to him, in friendship and in admiration indeed.
In terms of number of publications, Smith is one of the most prolific philosophers of his generation. In addition to his prodigious output, the articles contained in this volume reveal another impressive aspect of his career: the number of disciplines in which the influence of his work has been felt: biology, computer science and informatics, cognitive science, economics, genetics, geography, law, neurology, and philosophy itself. Smith has published important articles in all of these areas, and he has also received prestigious awards by the professional governing bodies of these diverse disciplines. He even holds professorships in six of these fields. Few scholars have ever materialized the real value of interdisciplinarity in anything like the way Smith has. The wide-ranging relevance of his work thus constitutes another, perhaps even more powerful, reason for publishing a volume such as this.
Smith received his BA in mathematics and philosophy (First Class Honours) from Oxford University in 1973âa degree which was subsequently converted to a MA in 1977âand his PhD in philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1976, with a dissertation titled âThe Ontology of Reference: Studies in Logic and Phenomenologyâ. He has held academic posts at the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, at the International Academy of Philosophy (in Liechtenstein), and, since 1994, at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been an invited professor in dozens of universities across the globe, and he is a member of the editorial board of dozens of peer-reviewed publications. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the European Union, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, to name a few. No philosopher comes close to Smith in terms of the number of grants he has received, or in terms of the financial significance of those grants.
Smithâs early interests, captured in the title of his dissertation, have remained at the center of his investigations during his long and fruitful career, and they are key in helping us understand how Smith has been able to contribute to so many diverse disciplines, and indeed how his influence is to be appreciated in the contributions to this volume. Above all, he has been preoccupied with the fundamental structure of the universe: with what philosophers have traditionally called âmetaphysicsâ or âontologyâ. Given the ebb and flow of human intellectual pursuits, and given the progressive specialization of human knowledge and the subsequent proliferation of different disciplines and sub-disciplines, this important branch of philosophy became just thatâa branch of philosophy, without much connection to the sciences or practical affairs. Interestingly, however, it was nothing other than metaphysics that, say, the early pre-Socratic philosophers thought they were doingâand they did not see this focus as separate from their concern with what throughout different periods in human history have been labeled âpurelyâ scientific endeavors. While in the Renaissance we witness efforts to emphasize the connections between philosophy and the sciences, these connections were particularly significant in the twentieth-century school of phenomenology, particularly in the work of Edmund Husserl. Smith has been greatly influenced by Husserl (he has published considerably on Husserl, and is the co-editor of the authoritative The Cambridge Companion to Husserl). Steeped in this phenomenological tradition, Smith sees his investigations as at once ontological (and thus philosophical) and scientific.
There is, of course, nothing objectionable about projects in, say, the philosophy of medicine, or the philosophy of music, and so on. But it is important to emphasize that this is not what Smith has done. Rather, he has mobilized philosophical tools and methods so that he can contribute to medicine itself, music itself, and so on. It is not that philosophers, qua philosophers, are familiar with the specific facts of medicine or music (etc.)âthey are clearly not (hence the need for collaborative approaches such as those which Smith often directs). But philosophers do know better than physicians and musicians (etc.) how to conceptualize some abstract features of these very disciplines, and how to understand the relations between the different entities which fall under the purview of these disciplines. Philosophy, in the sense Smith practices it, is not a meta-discipline that hovers over other disciplines: it is, rather, the quintessential infra-discipline, which lives within these other disciplines.
That philosophers are better equipped to investigate and analyze the fundamental structure of the universe than any other professionals or academics has been Smithâs animating conviction throughout his career. It is, after all, philosophers who are trained to deal with metaphysical or ontological questions. And it is philosophers, too, who are trained in formal logic, and thus likelier than others to approach these ontological questions with the rigor and systematicity that logic presupposes. So, in Smithâs opinion, it is precisely in virtue of their expertise with those essentially philosophical tools that philosophers are so well-suited to come to the help of other disciplines. Smithâs work shows that this help goes much farther than conceptual clarity. The use to which Smith has put the philosophical tools afforded by ontology and logic in the service of other disciplines has been truly revolutionary.
Chronologically listing the title of some of Smithâs influential publications provides hints as to why the preceding assertion is not hyperbolic at all. âThe Ontogenesis of Mathematical Objectsâ (1975), âLogic, Form and Matterâ (1981), âThe Substitution theory of Artâ (1986), âTextual Deferenceâ (1991), âPutting the World Back into Semanticsâ (1993), âFormal Ontology, Common Sense, and Cognitive Scienceâ (1995), âGeographical Categories: An Ontological Investigationâ (2001), âThe Metaphysics of Real Estateâ (2001), âHusserlian Ecologyâ (2001), âQuantum Mereotopologyâ (2002), âDo Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landformsâ (2003), âBiomedical Informatics and Granularityâ (2004), âOn Carcinomas and Other Pathological Entitiesâ (2005), âReferent Tracking for Digital Rights Managementâ (2007), âFramework for a Protein Ontologyâ (2007), âFoundations for a Realist Ontology of Mental Diseaseâ (2010), âTowards an Ontology of Pain (2011), âHow to Do Things with Documentsâ (2012). As can be surmised from the titles aboveâsome of which have appeared in leading publications outside of philosophyâSmith has contributed concrete, in-house advancements in many disciplines.
In addition to the indirect evidence we could glean from these titles and from the sheer output of Smithâs work, consider one example of the sort of strategy which Smith has employed in bringing philosophical tools to bear on other disciplines: the case of medicine, and in particular through the lens of the work of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS), which Smith founded in 2001, after he was awarded the two million Euros attached to the Wolfgang Paul Prize, with which the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation honored him. Imagine a team of physicians who undertake to collate and systematize data surrounding a certain disease, in order to, for example, develop software that may render the diagnosis and treatment of this disease more efficient. It is of course common knowledge that physicians cannot undertake this project aloneâcomputer scientists would be needed in this enterprise. What is not commonly acknowledged is that a team of physicians and computer scientists working together would still need ontologistsâthat is, philosophers.
Neither physicians nor musicians (etc.), after all, are likely to understandâand at any rate are not trained to understandâthe sometimes subtle but nonetheless important differences between the sorts of relations that may obtain between the fundamental entities with which their disciplines deal. For example, there are important differences between parts and proper parts; and there are important differences between something being either a part or a proper part of something else, on the one hand, and it being caused by that something else, on the other; between two entities overlapping and two entities underlapping, amongst many others. Smithâs efforts in this area have both highlighted the ways in which philosophically uninformed approaches to medicine have failed, and have helped his team of researchers develop conceptual apparatuses better able to capture the ontological foundations of medicine. The results of Smithâs efforts at the helm of IFOMIS can be appreciated not only by looking at the many academic publications that the institute has produced, but by the fact that other organizationsâform the Volkswagen Foundation to the National Institute of Healthâhave continued to support his projects in this area, to the tune of many millions of dollars.
This volume is not conceived only as a celebration of Smithâs work. It is also a stand-alone testament to how genuinely fruitful the work has been, and how the contributors take insights or interests prompted by his work in different directions. While not all of the contributions are about Smithâs work directly, they all resonate well with topics to which he has devoted attention. The general theme that pervades the volume is, of course, connected to ontology. But the range of specific topics covered herein reflects the dizzying breadth of Smithâs own career, and of the value of ontology. Preferring to let them speak for themselves, I shall only offer one-line summaries of the chapters, merely in order to offer at once a glimpse on the richness of the volume.
The volume opens with Peter Simonsâs âOntologia Utens and Beings in Timeâ, and with his investigation of the connections between âontologyâ in the classical Aristotelian sense and the sort of novel applied realms to which Smith, above all, has put it to use. In âAgainst Fantology Againâ, Ingvar Johansson takes on Smithâs attacks on a widespread assumption in contemporary philosophy whereby the fundamental elements of ontology track the fundamental aspects of logical syntax. Achille Varzi, in âOn Drawing Lines across the Boardâ, turns our attention to the implications of Smithâs work on the distinction between fiat and bona fide boundaries, not only regarding geography itself but regarding the surprisingly many other general areas of investigation in which it applies as well.
In âSocial Reality, Law, and Justiceâ, David Koepsell further highlights the scope of Smithâs ontology by exploring its connection to some central worries of jurisprudence and to the burgeoning field of social ontology. Some of these concerns are further explored by Alessandro Saliceâs âActs of Terror as Collective Violent Actsâ, in which an analysis of the elusive notion of terrorism is advanced. Maurizio Ferraris, in his âLetter of Pharisaismâ, discusses the implications of Heideggerâs Nazism (particularly in light of the recent publication of the Black Notebooks). In âJust Organic Wholesâ, Leo Zaibert pays attention to the ways in which what Smith has dubbed the tradition of âAustrian Philosophyâ may offer an unusually penetrating lens through which to look at the problem of the justification of punishment.
In ââPainâ in SNOMED CT: Is There an Anesthetic?â Werner Ceusters and Jonathan P. Bona offer an example of the sort of practical applications to which ontology can be put to use by examining the ways in which the Systematized Nomenclature of MedicineâClinical Terms deals with pain. Similarly, in his âThe Structure of Standard Musical Notationâ, Roberto Casati discusses both some principles that govern the representation of time in standard music notation, and some cognitive consequences of such notation. In her âAttitude: How we Learn to Inhabit the Futureâ, Mariam Thalos offers a phenomenological account of the perception of time, and of how humans experience it at different stages of their lives. In her âParental Love and the Meaning of Lifeâ Berit Brogaard discusses some unsavory aspects of motherhood, by considering how motherhood conflicts with other valuable aspects of existence such as autonomy and welfare. And in âFoolishness and the Value of Knowledgeâ Kevin Mulligan closes the volume by presenting an analysis of foolishness in which it is importantly distinguished from stupidity, and in which it is seen as a form of an intellectual vice.
As it turns out the last note of the last article in the volume can be put to use in concluding this brief introduction as well. For not only does it appropriately conclude Mulliganâs piece, but it offers an invitation to consider some of the multifarious ways in which Smithâs seminal work on ontologyâboth theoretical and appliedâyield fruit in the contributions contained herein.
This tribute to Barry Smith has touched on only a few of the topics he has illuminated over a long and extraordinarily productive career, a career driven by an unusually large range of strong interests pursued in a very determined fashion. Barry Smith, his friends and admirers all agree, is in many ways an epistemic hero.