Contact
chengzhixiang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn / zhixiang.cheng@alumni.utoronto.ca
Current Position
Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Science, Tsinghua University
Research Interests
Philosophy of Biology, General Philosophy of Science, Intellectual History of Evolutionary Biology, History of Technology in China
Current Research Projects
- Effective Population Size: Misconceptions, Modelling Strategies and Non-causal Explanation
- Modern Synthesis: Historical and Philosophical issues
Education & Previous Career
2022-2025: Post-doctoral Researcher, Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2017-2022: Ph.D., Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), University of Toronto
2014-2017: M.A., Department of Philosophy, Peking University
2010-2014: B.A., Department of Philosophy, Peking University
2010-2014: B.A. (Double Degree), National School of Development, Peking University
Selected Publications
Cheng, Z. (forthcoming). Interpretative Models and the Biological Significance of Fisher’s ‘Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Cheng, Z. (2025). Organismic Traits and the Explanatory Scope of Natural Selection. Journal of Dialectics of Nature, 47 (7), 40-48. (In Chinese)
Sung, W. C., Yeang, C. P., & Cheng, Z. (2024). Demarcating a Pure Land: CFido as a Cyberspace for Computer Amateurs in 1990s China. Isis, 115(2), 267-291.
Cheng, Z. (2022). The Shadow of “the Eclipse of Darwinism”: The Problem of Evolutionary Mechanisms in Republican China, 1910s-1930s. Theory in Biosciences, 141(4) , 349-364.
