David Dunér, Ph.D., is Professor of History of Science and Ideas at Lund University, Sweden and researcher at the Centre of Cognitive Semiotics, Lund University. His historical research concerns the development of science, medicine, mathematics, and technology during the scientific revolution and onwards. Within Cognitive Semiotics he works on the bio-cultural co-evolution of cognition and language. His latest book is The Natural Philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Study in the Conceptual Metaphors of the Mechanistic World-View (2013).
Dr. Dunér studies the history and philosophy of astrobiology, and he was guest editor of the special issue “The History and Philosophy of Astrobiology” of the journal Astrobiology (2012, 12:10). His astrobiological research includes “astrocognition,” the study of cognition in space, detailed in his chapter “Astrocognition: Prolegomena to a Future Cognitive History of Exploration,” which appeared in Humans in Outer Space – Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2011).
Dr. Dunér’s work on the semiotic and cognitive foundations of interstellar communication appeared in the volume Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2011), and his work on interstellar intersubjectivity was included in the volume Extraterrestrial Altruism (2014). His most recent publication in astrobiology is a chapter on the prehistory of the L-factor in Drake’s equation, published in The Drake Equation (2015).