Philosophy and Religious Studies Program

Faculty and Staff

Madeline Muntersbjorn is an associate professor of philosophy. She received her Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Pittsburgh's History and Philosophy of Science Department where she wrote a dissertation on 17th C. mathematics. Muntersbjorn teaches logic at different levels, including core courses (PHIL1010 Introduction to Logic), major core courses (PHIL3000 Symbolic Logic), and graduate seminars for M.A. students (PHIL6000 Advanced Logic). Muntersbjorn also teaches Science & Society (PHIL3310), Modern Philosophy (PHIL3230), Philosophy of Natural Science (4300/5300), and 20^th C. Analytic Philosophy (PHIL4280/5280). In 1997, she won a course development grant to develop an interdisciplinary class, The Self in Science-Fact and Science-Fiction.

Her most recent pop culture seminar, PHIL4900 Feminism & Science Fiction, explores the trope of the sentient female machine. In 2008, Muntersbjorn won a course development grant to develop a new course, “Darwin: Man, Myth and Nature,” taught in Spring 2009 to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150^th anniversary of the Origin of Species. In 2009, she was part of a team of philosophy professors to receive a course transformation grant, “Evidence and Reason,” to develop problem sets in logic and critical thinking for first-year students. Faculty from pharmacy, education, engineering, law, and the sciences contributed case studies and real-world problems. Muntersbjorn continues to develop course content relevant to students from across the University of Toledo.

In her research, Muntersbjorn studies demonstrations from the history and pedagogy of mathematics and monsters from popular culture in an effort to articulate what these demonstrations teach us about the real world of lived experience. Muntersbjorn studies the history of science and science-fiction in an effort to show how deliberate fictions, from missing links to mathematical models, and artificial languages, including algebra and other formal systems, make practical truths more evident.

Neither traditional Platonist nor strict constructivist, Muntersbjorn thinks mathematical practices involve real relations among emergent phenomena that come into being over time and, thereby, make modern life possible. On her view, mathematics is neither created nor discovered. Rather, mathematics is cultivated. (See, for example, “Representational Innovation and Mathematical Ontology,” Synthese, 2003.) She studies the influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution on the philosophy of Henri Poincaré. Recently she published, “Morality and Mathematics” in Mathematical Cultures.  The focus of her work in popular culture studies is on relations between kinds of persons in science fiction television. Recently she published, “Hideous Fictions and Horrific Fates,” in Westworld and Philosophy.

Muntersbjorn is committed to the project of public education, broadly construed, and is inspired by Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE project. Muntersbjorn is currently co-editing a volume of papers inspired by the Algebra Project of Bob Moses (1935-2021).