Professor of Historical Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas.
Associate Director, Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
University of Texas at Dallas
School of Arts and Humanities
P.O. Box 830688
Mail Station Jo. 3.1
Richardson, Texas 75083-0688
Office: 972-883-2007
Fax: 972-883-2989
E-mail: channell@utdallas.edu
Ethics/Medical Humanities Areas of Expertise/Interest:
I have a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology and I spent a postdoctoral year as a Fellow at the National Humanities Institute at the University of Chicago where I worked with Stephen Toulmin on biomedical ethics. I also have taught courses in biomedical ethics at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago and at the University of Texas at Dallas. I have also been awarded a Science and Religion Course Prize from the John Templeton Foundation as well as a Development Award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and a Lecture Grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
My main interest in ethics/medical humanities is in the area of ethical issues associated with the interaction of technology and life.
CME Lectures:
Technology and Ethics in the Age of Vital Machines
Public Lectures:
Technology and Ethics in the Age of Vital Machines
The Biological Roots of Technology
The Computer at Nature’s Core
Other Recent Ethics/Medical Humanities Activities:
Organized a Lecture Series on God, Minds and Computers at the University of Texas at Dallas (supported by the John Templeton Foundation).
Recent Ethics/Medical Humanities Publications:
The Vital Machine: A Study of Technology and Organic Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
The Emergence of the Engineering Sciences: A Historical Analysis. In Handbook of the Philosophy of Technology and the Engineering Sciences. Ed. by Anthonie Meijers (North Holland: Elsevier Science, 2008), in press.
The Computer at Nature’s Core. Wired Magazine (February 2004), 79-80.
The Role of Thomas Reid’s Philosophy in Science and Technology. In The Philosophy of Thomas Reid, Ed. by Eric Matthews and Melvin Dalgarno (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Press, 1989).
The Biological Roots of Nineteenth Century Technology. In Science and Technology, Humanism and Progress – Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the History of Science (Bucharest: Academy of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 1982).
The Early Medical Use of X-Rays in Cleveland. The Bulletin of the Cleveland Medical Library 20 (1973): 3-11.
Key Publications:
A History of Science, Technology and Their Interactions (New York: Oxford University Press), forthcoming.
Scottish Roots of Engineering Science in Japan. In XXII International Congress of History of Science: Book of Abstracts (Beijing: Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2005).
A History of Engineering Science: An Annotated Bibliography (Smithsonian Institution Series in Bibliographies in the History of Science and Technology) (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1989).
Scottish Men of Science – W.J.M. Rankine (Edinburgh: Scotland’s Cultural Heritage, 1986).
