Simon Torracinta is a lecturer in the History of Science Department. He received his PhD in History of Science and Medicine from Yale, and was previously Visiting Research Scholar at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy in 2022–23.

​His research centers on the history of the modern human sciences, with a particular emphasis on the history of economic, psychological, and anthropological thought. His work on the social and economic dimensions of the human and life sciences in particular emerges out of a broader interest in the intertwined histories of modern science, technology, and capitalism. His book project, Economy of Desire: The Sciences of Human Wants, offers a comparative history of scientific ideas about human desires, wants, and motives, across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain, Austria, and the United States.

He is a Contributing Editor to the Boston Review and an Editor at the History of Anthropology Review. He has also written about issues relating to his work for public audiences in the Washington Post, n+1, and the New Inquiry. His personal website can be accessed here.

Courses:

Being Human since 1945 (HISTSCI 1735)
From Steam Engines to Silicon Valley: Science and Capitalism in History (HISTSCI 1861)
Junior Tutorial (HISTSCI 98)

Selected Publications

“Maps of Desire: Edward Tolman’s Drive Theory of Wants,” History of the Human Sciences 36.1 (2023): 3-30.

“Escape from the Market.” On Solidarity. Ed. Matt Lord. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023.

Op-Ed: “A Miracle Cure for Addiction May Not Be Around the Corner,” Washington Post (July 2023).

“Bad Economics,” Boston Review (March 2022).

“We Don’t Know, But Let’s Try It.” Uncertainty. Sheila Jasanoff et al. Ed. Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021. 132-155.

Previous Degrees:
Ph.D., Yale University
M.A., Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
B.A., University of Oxford