Frank X. Ryan

Frank X. Ryan is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator of Philosophy. After careers in broadcast journalism and owning a record store, he earned a BA in Philosophy from Colorado State University Pueblo and an MA and Ph.D. from Emory University. He taught at Emory, Reinhardt College, Georgia State University, and Auburn University before joining the faculty at Kent State in 1997. He has served as Graduate Coordinator, Chair of the Student Media Policy Committee, and as Visiting Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research in Massachusetts.

Ryan’s primary research is in pragmatism and American philosophy, with interests in evolution theory, the philosophy of economics, and eternal recurrence. He is currently working on a transactional critique of philosophical realism. Books include:

1. The Real Metaphysical Club: The Philosophers, the Arguments, and the Writings, 1868-1883. Eds. with introductions by Frank X. Ryan, James A. Good, and Brian E. Butler. Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming, 2018.
2. Seeing Together: Mind, Matter, and the Experimental Outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. Great Barrington, MA: The American Institute for Economic Research, 2011.
3. Darwin in America: 1820-1930, Volumes 1-10. Ed. and introductions by Frank X. Ryan. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000–2002.

Frequently cited essays include:

1. “Rethinking the Human Condition: Skepticism, Realism, and Transactional Pragmatism,” Contemporary Pragmatism 13 (2016): 263–297.
2. “Eternal Recurrence and the Multiverse.” In Death and Anti-Death, Vol.12: One Hundred Years After Charles S. Peirce, ed. Charles Tandy. Ann Arbor: Ria University Press, 2014, 297-334.
3. “The Extreme Heresy of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley II: Knowing Knowing and the Known,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 33.4 (1997): 1003–1023.