Prof. Pigliucci has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the nature of pseudoscience, and practical philosophies like Stoicism and New Skepticism.

Prof. Pigliucci has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudo-scientific attack.” 

In the area of public outreach, Prof. Pigliucci has published in national and international outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Contributing Editor to Skeptical Inquirer. He writes on practical and general philosophy at Medium. 

At last count, Prof. Pigliucci has published 176 technical papers in science and philosophy. He is also the author or editor of 16 books, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books). Other titles include Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (University of Chicago Press), and the forthcoming The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders (Basic Books).

Recent Books

The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders (Basic Books, 2022).

Think like a Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World (The Teaching Company, 2021).

A Field Guide to a Happy Life: 53 Brief Lessons for Living (Basic Books, 2020).

How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy of Life, ed. by Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary & Daniel Kaufman (Vintage, 2020).

Recent Publications

Pigliucci, M. 2022. A biologist’s perspective (on consciousness). In: Philosophers on Consciousness, ed. by Jack Symes, Bloomsbury, chapter 6.

Pigliucci, M. 2021. Presenting philosophy — what science taught me about it. Human Affairs 31:439–447.

Pigliucci, M. 2021. The tension between scientific knowledge and common sense philosophy. In: The Cambridge Companion to Common-Sense Philosophy. Cambridge University press.

Cleary, S. and Pigliucci, M. 2021. How to live a good life — Two examples. APPA Journal 16(2):2689-2699.

Pigliucci, 2021. Is indigenous science pseudoscience? A further response to Gorelick. In: Indigenizing the University, ed. by F. Widdowson, Frontier Center for Public Policy, pp. 223-229.

Pigliucci, M. 2021. Is indigenous science pseudoscience? A response to Gorelick. In: Indigenizing the University, ed. by F. Widdowson, Frontier Center for Public Policy, pp. 199-214.

Richards, C.L. and Pigliucci, M. 2021. Epigenetic inheritance a decade into the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Paradigmi.

Pigliucci, M. 2020. Stoic therapy for today’s troubles. In: The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. by K. Arenson, Routledge, chapter 31.

Pigliucci, M. 2020. Science Wars, Scientism, and Think Tanks: A Précis of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. Journal of Cognitive Historiography.

Pigliucci, M. 2020. Why Alex Rosenberg – and a Number of Other Philosophers – Are Wrong Just about Everything: A Commentary on Scientistic Reductionism. Journal of Cognitive Historiography.

Rosenberg Larsen, R., Cruz, H.D., Kaplan, J., Fuentes, A., Marks, J., Pigliucci, M., Alfano, M., Livingston Smith, D., and Schroeder, L. 2020. More than provocative, less than scientific: A commentary on the editorial decision to publish Cofnas. Philosophical Psychology, online access.

Pigliucci, M. 2020. Star Trek as philosophy: Spock as Stoic sage. In: Johnson D. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Pigliucci, M. 2020. How to behave virtuously in an irrational world. Disputatio, Philosophical Research Bulletin 9, no. 13.