John Wilkins, at Evolving Thoughts, has posted a memorial note and a description of David's philosophical work and its impact.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
David Hull
I'll remember David Hull for the support he showed to young philosophers and for the fierce and unwavering loyalty he had for his friends, who were many. Talking to David allowed one to make a molehill out of any mountain. Problems could be figured out, deconstructed, detoured around, or walked right over. The size of a problem did not discourage him from taking it on, even when doing so required 600 pages or decades of activism.
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Here is the memorial note from Northwestern University:
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2010/08/david-hull-philosophy-obituary.html
Ken Seeskin, who was chair of the department for many, many years, says that David Hull's "colleagues -- myself included -- began to think of him more as an angel than a human being."
This is true. To take an example, it was not until my third year of graduate school that I learned that the large, central room called the graduate student lounge had at one time been David Hull's office. Because the grad students had no space in which to meet and talk with each other, David gave up his office, moving into the back half of his postdoc's office. Many of us benefited from actions like this, without necessarily even realizing it.
Michael Ruse's memorial essay for David Hull is here:
http://philsci.org/
That site doesn't seem to be providing a permalink, but John Wilkins has reposted the text here
There are more photos of Michael Ruse and David Hull on their 2005 trip to Glen Roy here:
http://www.fsu.edu/~hps/glenroy.html
Mary Anne Warren also died last week, and a nice note about both Warren and Hull is at What Sorts of People.
David Hull's dissertation advisor was Michael Scriven, who was married to Mary Anne Warren.
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