Susan Oyama (born May 22, 1943)^[1] is a psychologist and philosopher of science, currently professor emerita at the John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.^[2]

Oyama's work interrogates the nature versus nurture debates, and problematizes the conceptual foundations (e.g., assumptions, binaries, and classifications) on which these debates depend. Her notion of a "developmental system" allows us to reevaluate and reintegrate standard dichotomies such as development and evolution, body and mind, and stasis and change. Oyama's Developmental systems theory has had a significant impact in cognitive science, psychology, and the philosophy of biology.^[3]

She graduated from Mills College and Harvard University.^[4]

She married the Italian composer Luciano Berio in 1966. They divorced in 1972.

Books, as author

• Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide (2000), ISBN 978-0-8223-2472-0
• The Ontogeny of Information (2000), originally published in 1985, and revised for republication, is regarded as a foundational text in developmental systems theory^{[5] [6]} ISBN 978-0-8223-2466-9

Books, as editor

• Cycles of Contingency (2001) edited by Russell D. Gray, Paul E. Griffiths and Susan Oyama, ISBN 9780262150538

Papers

• Biologists behaving badly: vitalism and the language of language (2010) History and philosophy of the life sciences, 32(2-3), 401–423. PMID 21162376
• The idea of innateness: effects on language and communication research(1990) Developmental psychobiology, 23(7), 741–760. PMID 2286301

• Epigenetics
• Evo-devo
• Modern evolutionary synthesis