Gideon Manning

Initially trained in epistemology and history and philosophy of science, Gideon Manning has developed complementary interests in the history and philosophy of medicine, European intellectual, social, and cultural history. His research focuses primarily on epistemological questions tied to the history of medical and scientific ideas and practices, with particular emphasis on changing conceptions of the human and animal body, life, death, health, explanation, and nature during the early modern period and the rise of experimentation and mechanism as they relate to these concepts. He is similarly interested in historiographical questions and the long reception of the early modern period, especially in recent philosophy, science, medicine, and popular culture. Manning’s earliest work addressed the 17th-century natural philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, but increasingly he has turned, first, to the role of images and visualization in the history and philosophy of science and, second, to recovering the importance of medicine to early modern philosophy and science as a vehicle for expanding the sources and voices included in historical scholarship. Manning’s areas of research specialization and teaching expertise span early modern philosophy, the history of medicine and the life sciences, medical humanities, contemporary bioethics and public policy.

Manning holds an AB in philosophy from Harvard University and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh and served on the faculty at the College of William and Mary, California Institute of Technology, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was director of the Cedars-Sinai Program in the History of Medicine until 2025. In 2013, he was the recipient of a “New Directions Fellowship” from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which he used to attend medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Manning is a past associate editor of HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science and currently edits the Medicine Section for the Springer On-line Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and Science while also serving as the books review editor for Annals of Science. He splits his time between Early Modern Studies at Claremont Graduate University, the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow, and his role as president of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine. His current projects include a co-authored monograph on the history of death, another on Descartes’s long reception history, and a long paper about evolving standards of description with the appearance of microscopy and illustrated books during the so-called “scientific revolution.” Manning is also leading an international effort to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of the blood, which will to take place in 2028.