Neal Solomon
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Neal Solomon (born 1960) is a social theorist, systems theorist and architect, management consultant, inventor, entrepreneur and author. Though he has been a management consultant to the legal profession for over twenty years, he has also been a well-traveled nature photographer for over thirty years. The breadth of his intellectual pursuits is substantial: He has published dozens of works in ten fields – notably in social philosophy, political theory, economics, management theory, computer science, proteomics, engineering systems and information technology – and holds patents on inventions in several technology categories ranging from business methods to robotics. An American philosopher and polymath, he currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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[edit] Background
Born in San Diego County, California, in 1960 to Donald J. Solomon (1934 - ), an attorney, and Roberta Y. Solomon (1932 - ), a real estate appraiser, he was raised in San Diego until 1973. After 1973, he attended high school in Texas, Florida, Maine and Tennessee, graduating from Belleview High School in Nashville at age 16 after earning two varsity letters.
[edit] Higher Education
After attending Shimer College (a “Great Books” school), he graduated from the departments of philosophy at Reed College (B.A., 1981) and The University of Chicago (A.M., 1982). At Reed, his work included a thesis on Kantian moral philosophy.
At Chicago, he studied with one former and one then-current editors-in-chief of the journal Ethics – Warner Wick, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, Dean of Students in the College and University Provost and Vice-President, and Brian Barry, Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science (winner of the 2001 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science). He also studied with Paul Ricoeur, the John Nuveen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought (co-winner of the 2004 $1M Kluge Prize), Leszek Kolakowski, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Social Thought (winner of the premier 2003 Kluge Prize) and Alan Gewirth, Professor of Philosophy. His work at Chicago included an emphasis on Aristotelianism, epistemology, ethical theory and Continental philosophy.
[edit] Management Consulting
In 1983 he formed a management consulting business, the primary purpose of which was to provide analysis and advice to law firm management regarding strategic, organizational and recruiting matters. He has published books and articles on the economics of the legal profession (1993b and 1998.)
[edit] Early Theoretical Writings
From 1992 to 1998 he published at least ten books in the human sciences on topics ranging from social and political theory to economics and business management theory. The political theory is generally a critique of pre-modern forms of government that illustrates the conflicts of modern economic institutions and modern democracies (1992). The economic theory views the dynamics between traditional growth and cycle economic theories (1993c). The analysis of business organizations reveals an original view of professional service firm growth that witnessed the rise of the large law firm as a new institutional form from about 1980 to the present (1993b and 1998). Finally, the social theory analyzes the conflicts between pre-modern and postmodern ideologies in the modern period (1993a). Overall, his social philosophy applies dialectical philosophical methods to the interdisciplinary analyses of organizations, political institutions and modern ideologies (1995).
[edit] Intelligent Systems Inventions
Since 1999 he has developed several generations of "intelligent systems" technology, including applications to commerce, education, robotics, networking and bioinformatics. He holds several patents on two continents involving these systems. As sole inventor of these systems, he has scores of additional patents pending in G8 countries. He founded Solomon Research LLC to develop and commercialize these technologies. These intelligent systems innovations affect numerous industries worldwide, notably the software, computer networking, communications, e-commerce, biotechnology and defense industries.
Among his major system inventions are:
- a multilateral and multivariate commercial system for supply chain management (2000)
- multiple hybrid collective robotics systems (2002)
- an automated education system (2004)
- a database management system for distributed computing networks (2004)
- a mobile hybrid software router for intelligent systems (2004)
- a functional proteomics modeling system for personalized medicine (2004)
[edit] Art Development
Since 1975 he has developed an avocation in nature and landscape color photography. His images, which span several continents, are generally considered to combine realism and romanticism.
[edit] Public Interest Activities
He is on the board of directors of It's Possible, which provides funding to community programs, including those involving education, health and the arts, with an aim to promote individual transformation and success. In addition, he founded Catalyst Learning Strategies to promote individual excellence and creativity and to improve student-centered learning using new technologies.
[edit] Research Interests
His general research interests include: the history of philosophy; ancient philosophy, particularly Aristotelianism; modern philosophy from Descartes to the present; metaphilosophy; the history and philosophy of science and technology; the philosophy of history; aesthetics; ethics and moral philosophy; social and cultural theory; political philosophy, particularly democratic theory; the philosophy and history of economics; critical theory; epistemology, phenomenology and hermeneutics; management theory, particularly the economics of the legal profession; informatics; robotics; computer networking, particularly database and routing architectures; complexity theory, particularly intelligent systems theory and; computational proteomics. He has published major works, as well as articles, in most of these fields.
[edit] Partial bibliography
- Dilemmas of Democracy (1992) [in three volumes: (1) A Critique of Liberalism, (2) A Critique of Political Ideology and (3) The Limits of Social Theory]
- The Problem of Modernity (1993a)
- Legal Management Theory (1993b)
- Theoretical Foundations of Dynamic Macroeconomics (1993c)
- The Evolution of Philosophy (1995)
- Transformation of the Corporate Law Firm (1998)
