Rate My Professor Sandy (Alexander) Boucher

Dr. Sandy (Alexander) Boucher serves as Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education at the University of New England. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, completed in 2012 under the supervision of Greg Restall, with a thesis titled 'Empiricism, Metaphysical Stances and the Philosophy of Biology'. He also earned an MA and a BA (Hons) from Monash University. Boucher's research specializations encompass the philosophy of biology, focusing on functions and teleology, units of selection, species, natural kinds, macroevolution, and paleobiology; general philosophy of science, particularly the scientific realism debate; metaphilosophy; and epistemology. He supervises PhD and MA students in philosophy of science and related areas and is a member of the Philosophy of Science Association, International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology, Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, and Australasian Association of Philosophy.

Following his PhD, Boucher worked as a researcher on the IARPA Critical Thinking and Argument Mapping Project at the University of Melbourne, and he has taught at the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, and the University of Connecticut before joining UNE. He is the author of the forthcoming book Empiricism, Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Biology: Taking a Stance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). His peer-reviewed publications include 'Functionalism and Structuralism in Biology: Stances or Explanatory Strategies?' (Synthese 206(1), 2025), 'Green fields, ugly ducklings and black swans: aesthetic dimensions of ecological science' with Samantha Capon et al. (People and Nature 7, 2025), ‘The Pragmatic Turn in the Scientific Realism Debate’ with Curtis Forbes (Synthese 203(4), 2024), ‘Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Extension in Science’ (Inquiry 67(9), 2024), 'An Argument for Global Realism about the Units of Selection' (Biology and Philosophy 38(5), 2023), ‘Cladism, Monophyly and Natural Kinds’ (Croatian Journal of Philosophy XXII(64), 2022), ‘Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes’ (Foundations of Science 26(4), 2021), ‘Methodological naturalism in the sciences’ (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 88(1), 2020), and ‘What is a philosophical stance? Paradigms, policies and perspectives’ (Synthese 191(10), 2014). Boucher serves as Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy and co-edited a special issue of Research in Ethical Issues in Organisations on surveillance, big data, and applied ethics (vol. 26, 2022). He also coordinates the HASS Research Seminar Series.