Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse (b. 1940, Birmingham) is a British-Canadian philosopher of science best known for his work in philosophy of biology, the history of evolutionary thought, and the relationship between science and religion. Trained at Bristol, McMaster, and Hamilton, he spent most of his career at the University of Guelph before founding the Program in History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University, where he became Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy. Ruse rose to prominence with The Darwinian Revolution (1979) and Darwinism Defended (1982), and he gave influential expert testimony in McLean v. Arkansas (1981) against creationism. Although a self-described agnostic, he has been a persistent critic of the New Atheism, particularly Richard Dawkins, arguing in Darwin and Design and The Evolution-Creation Struggle that evolution and Christianity need not conflict and that strident anti-religious polemics misrepresent both science and theology. His ethical naturalism, developed with E. O. Wilson, treats morality as an evolutionary adaptation lacking objective foundation—a position criticized by moral realists for collapsing into error theory. Ruse edited The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (with Stephen Bullivant) and wrote Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know (2015). His irenic stance has drawn criticism from Jerry Coyne and Daniel Dennett, while religious philosophers like Alvin Plantinga dispute his account of evolutionary epistemology.