Gerhard Vollmer


Gerhard Vollmer is a German physicist and philosopher. He is perhaps best known for his development of an evolutionary theory of knowledge.

Life

Vollmer was born in Speyer. He studied in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Freiburg. After finishing his degree in physics in 1968 he studied philosophy and linguistics in Freiburg. He worked as a trainee in Deutschen Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg. In Freiburg he attained a doctorate in theoretical physics. He stayed here after completing a year's stint as a research assistant in Montreal in 1975. In 1974, Vollmer attained an additional doctorate in philosophy.
From 1975 Vollmer taught at the Leibniz University Hannover. From 1981 he lectured on the Philosophy of Biology at the University of Giessen. From 1991 he has taught philosophy at the TU Braunschweig. He holds lectures and classes in logic, epistemology and philosophy of science, natural philosophy, and artificial intelligence. He has also worked on evolutionary ethics, which he says consists of attempts to add evolutionary points of view to philosophical ethics.

Honours and associations

In 1963 he was awarded the Magnus Schwerd Prize for outstanding achievements in mathematics at school.
Vollmer became a member in 1998 of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences Halle. He is a member of Giordano Bruno Foundation and was elected to the learned society, Braunschweig Sciences Society. On his 60th birthday in 2003 a Festschrift was produced in his honour called "Cold-blooded: Philosophy from a rational standpoint".
In 2004 he received the Eduard Rhein Foundation Cultural Prize for having laid down the “foundation of an evolutionary theory of knowledge and for his outstanding achievement in bridging natural sciences and the social and humanistic disciplines”.
He is one of the editors of the periodical Aufklärung und Kritik. He is a member of the Science Advisory Committee of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften, a German-speaking organisation supporting scientific skepticism. Vollmer is also a member of the Brights movement.

Publications

There is a chapter by Vollmer in English in