Spirit(s) of a Profession
By Robert T. Pennock
Values are memorialized in the obituaries of three philosophers of biology.
This Article From Issue
May-June 2025
Volume 113, Number 3
Page 156
The ways the dead are memorialized reveal both individual and cultural values. Some funeral practices emphasize personal mourning—some with wailing, some with quiet sitting. Other services accentuate religious tenets—some the cycles of birth and death, others the promise of an afterlife. Most rites combine both in some form of communal remembrance of the deceased through stories and songs, shrines and symbols, eulogies and obituaries.
QUICK TAKE
- The ways we memorialize the dead, especially in written professional obituaries, is directly about the individual’s life, but indirectly reveals community values.
- Analyzing the traits commonly noted in obituaries can give a sense of a field’s values and the ways that its luminaries were viewed as exemplars of a profession’s community spirit.
- Obituaries of central philosophers of biology emphasize the value of being part of a long-standing, ongoing conversation, and passing that spark to the next generation.
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