Nalini Bhushan is an American philosopher and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Smith College.^[1] Her work is on the philosophy of chemistry and Indian philosophy, among other subjects.

Lee C. McIntyre described Bhushan's edited volume Of Minds and Molecules (2000), co-edited with her husband Stuart Rosenfeld, as an effort to provide a "synthesis" of the field to date.^[2] A review in Philosophy of Science stated that the essays collected in Of Minds and Molecules were "helping" philosophy of chemistry "to take its place in the world of ideas".^[3] Another reviewer noted, however, that a number of anthologies of papers in the field had previously been published, and thus that the book's claim to be the "first" such anthology was probably inaccurate.^[4]

Her monograph Minds without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance (2017), co-authored with Jay L. Garfield, argues that Indian intellectual life during the British Raj was vibrant—contrary to the assumptions of many scholars.^[5][6] Minds without Fear was the subject of several essays in a symposium in Sophia.^[7]

Selected bibliography

• Bhushan, Nalini; Rosenfeld, Stuart M., eds. (2000). Of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-535181-1. OCLC 352886903.
• Bhushan, Nalini; Garfield, Jay L. (June 22, 2017). Minds without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190457594.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-045759-4.