David Beniaminovich Zilberman (Russian: Дави́д Бениами́нович Зильберма́н; May 25, 1938, Odessa – July 25, 1977, Boston) was a Russian-American philosopher and sociologist, scholar of Indian philosophy and culture.

Schedrovitsky recommended Zilberman to one of Russia's leading sociologists, Professor Yuri Levada, for the post-graduate program at the Institute for Concrete Sociological Research (IKSI) in Moscow.

Zilberman participated in the organized by Levada Methodological seminar which united supporters of many different scientific areas and was for a long time considered a semi-legal institution.

During these years Zilberman translated numerous Hindu and Buddhist texts, poetic abstracts from "The Mahabharata", and part of the Tattva-Cintamani tetralogy from Sanskrit.

After leaving the USSR they remained close friends and continued their collaborative research and publication efforts until Zilberman's death in July 1977.

Completed in 1972, the Тhesis was accepted but remained unpublished due to the unexpected and sudden Soviet suppression of sociological and related research (an event described in Zilberman's "Post-Sociological Society").

Its members were forced to operate behind the Iron Curtain in a context of severely limited public visibility and without proper scientific recognition under conditions of heightened Soviet-style repression.

He applied the theory of Modal Methodology analyzing philosophical traditions of classical Indian and modern Western philosophy.

Meanwhile, Zilberman started a book dedicated to thorough research and analysis of Russian Soviet Philosophy (the manuscript titled Moscow School of Methodology was left unfinished).

[1][2][3] Zilberman's archive is also preserved in the Special Collections at the Chicago University Library Research Center at Milton Singer Papers.

[4] In 1993-1994 at Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, Professor H. Gourko made a presentation of "Zilberman's Modal Methodology: a New Approach to Philosophy-Building".