Steve William Fuller (born 1959[1]) is an American social philosopher in the field of science and technology studies.

[2] Admitted as a John Jay Scholar to Columbia University, he majored in history and sociology and graduated summa cum laude in 1979.

[5] Fuller has been a visiting professor in Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden (where he held a Fulbright Professorship in 1995 at Gothenburg University), and the United States (UCLA).

The most obvious feature of Fuller's approach, already present in his 1988 book, is that he rejects out of hand the Cartesian problem of skepticism.

He has given many distinguished lectures and plenary addresses, and has presented to academic and non-academic audiences throughout the world, including over 100 media interviews.

[6] Since moving to the UK, Fuller has increasingly oriented himself towards public intellectual expression, including television, radio and internet, which he interprets as a natural outgrowth of his version of social epistemology.

The decision of the U.S. District Court held that intelligent design was a form of creationism and that its inclusion in the curriculum violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on the establishment of religion.

[27][28] On February 21, 2007, Fuller debated Lewis Wolpert at Royal Holloway, University of London on whether evolution and intelligent design should be accorded equal status as scientific theories.

Fuller endorsed a work in support of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute's textbook Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (2007).

In addition to introduction and conclusion chapters, it has chapters on the history of the relationship between religion and science, the thesis that modern science has its basis in an attempt by humanity to transcend itself and reach God, how Fuller believes complexity distinguishes ID from "other versions of creationism", legal issues, and the future of "Darwinism".

[36] Professor of mathematics at Rutgers University Norman Levitt, in a review, described it as "a truly miserable piece of work, crammed with errors scientific, historical, and even theological".

[41][42] Sahotra Sarkar, a philosophy professor[43] and integrative biologist[44] at the University of Texas at Austin also criticized Fuller's book for presenting an "analysis of the intellectual disputes over contemporary ID creationism [that] is almost vacuous".

[45] Sarkar further states that the book has an idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of philosophy, including of Kant, and of logical positivism; having a limited grasp of the history of science, including making claims about Newton, Cuvier, Agassiz, Lamarck, Mendel, Pearson and Galton that are not supported by their writings; failure to engage the "debate over naturalism that ID creationism has generated" with "remarks on supernaturalism [that show] him to be equally non-cognizant of the work of ... Philip Johnson"; and other scientific errors.

For the record, Charles Darwin set out to provide a cause, what he called—following his mentors like William Whewell (who in turn referred back to Newton)—a true cause or vera causa.

Darwin felt, and historians and philosophers of science as well as practicing evolutionary biologists still feel, that he succeeded…"[47] In a "book of the week" review by retired Divinity Professor Keith Ward in the Times Higher Education Supplement, the book was praised for providing often overlooked information and provocative interpretations, but was criticized for a number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations.

[49] In response, Fuller wrote an online response saying "if Grayling's grasp of the history of science went beyond head-banging standards, he would realize that our current level of scientific achievement would never have been reached, and more importantly that we would not be striving to achieve more, had chance-based explanations dominated over the design-based ones in our thinking about reality.

"[51] He continued, "I'll take on Fuller any day regarding the history and theology of the various versions of Christianity with which humanity has been burdened.