Subrena E. Smith

Subrena E. Smith is a philosopher of science and biology who serves as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. She completed her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and then received her master's and doctorate in philosophy from Cornell University.

Her main research areas are the philosophy of biology, evolutionary explanations, and the philosophy of science. Smith is especially known for her influential article "Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?" (2020), in which she argues that the strategies of evolutionary psychology for making inferences about contemporary human psychology are methodologically flawed. She demonstrates that this approach cannot prove the correspondence of today's cognitive mechanisms with those of the Pleistocene era.

Among her other important works is "Organisms as Persisters" (2017), which redefines the concept of the organism based on development and ecology, as well as articles on biological goals and intentionality and critiques of the application of evolutionary explanations in policymaking. Smith has also critiqued racial ideology and the social misuses of biological concepts, emphasizing the constructed nature of racial categories.