Terry Bynum

Terrell Ward Bynum
Terrell Ward Bynum at the Research Center on Computing & Society
Born	February 1941 Pennsylvania, US
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Information Revolution, Metaphilosophy, Gottlob Frege, Norbert Wiener, Philosophy and Cosmology
Influences Aristotle, Gottlob Frege, Norbert Wiener, Richard Rorty, Bernard Baumrin, James Moor, Walter Maner, Simon Rogerson

Terrell Ward Bynum is an American philosopher, writer and editor. Bynum is currently director of the Research Center on Computing and Society at Southern Connecticut State University, where he is also a professor of philosophy, and visiting professor in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility in De Montfort University, Leicester, England. He is best known as a pioneer and historian in the field of computer and information ethics; for his achievements in that field, he was awarded the Barwise Prize of the American Philosophical Association, the Weizenbaum Award of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, and the 2011 Covey Award of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy. In addition, Bynum was the founder and longtime editor-in-chief of the philosophy journal Metaphilosophy (1968 to 1993); a key founding figure (1974–1980) and the first executive director (1980–1982) of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers; biographer of the philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege, as well as a translator of Frege's early works in logic. Bynum's most recent research and publications concern the ultimate nature of the universe and the impact of the information revolution upon philosophy.

As a teenager with a home chemistry set, Bynum became interested in the ultimate nature of the universe, an interest that was reinforced by a high school chemistry teacher who taught "the new chemistry" of the 1950s, and also by an English teacher who assigned philosophical writing exercises to her students. After high school, Bynum studied chemistry at the University of Delaware (1959 to 1963), where, in 1961, philosopher Bernard Baumrin created the Delaware Seminars in Philosophy of Science featuring lectures by world-famous philosophers of science, such as Carl Hempel, Adolph Grunbaum, and Ernest Nagel. Impressed by the Delaware Seminars, Bynum added philosophy as a second field of study, and Baumrin became his logic teacher and mentor. At that time, Bynum developed a strong interest in the life and work of philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege. As an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, Bynum was surprised to learn that, although Gottlob Frege was considered by many to be "the greatest logician since Aristotle", very little was known about Frege's life, and some of his most important logical writings had never been translated into English. Bynum vowed to write Frege's biography and translate Frege’s most important logical works, if the opportunity arose to do so.