Embedded Files
Here is my academic CV
My current research concerns epistemological and ontological issues in the history and philosophy of science and early modern period. Specifically, I compare and analyze questions such as: What methods are used in arriving at scientific knowledge as opposed to mathematical knowledge? What were hypotheses and when did they become knowledge or part of a theory? I focus on the answers to these questions that figures like Newton, Du Châtelet, and Leibniz have provided.
This project is in many ways an expansion of my dissertation Understanding Hypotheses in Newton's Scientific Thought. In it I show that while in the Scholium of Book 3 of the Principia Newton declares to "feign no hypotheses,'' in a later paper Newton admits that hypotheses are allowed if "examinable" by experiments. I make sense of this tension by arguing that Newton's claims in Book 3 are a rejection of Cartesian hypotheses, and that he admits some hypotheses, which are distinguished by their metaphysical and empirical criteria, as well as by their proper usages. After first establishing that Newton was in fact a fallibilist about the certainty he conferred to scientific conclusions, I outline 6 metaphysical and empirical criteria for viable hypotheses. I then outline 2 main usages that viable hypotheses had for Newton: they could be used as a tools to prod science, or as a temporary underlying mechanism for an event.
From UIC's Cassirer Collection, a 1664 ed. of Descartes' La Geometrie (with H. Cavendish ownership stamp).
Ralph Cudworth's slam-dunk of a book title.
In summer and fall of 2025, I will be using an APA Berry Fund in Public Philosophy grant to host a series of "Philosophy in Nature" sessions. Details here!: http://bit.ly/philnat
In June, I attended the University of Minnesota's 2025 Summer Program at the Center for Canon Expansion and Change.
In May, I attended the Strong Start Teaching Institute at GVSU.
In April 2025, I presented my project "Reason and Resistance in Sor Juana" at the Traveling Early Modern Philosophy Organization (TEMPO) Conference, to be held at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
In March 2025, I presented my paper "Du Châtelet on Newton’s Method: The Cases of Universal Gravity and Geodesy" at the Émilie Du Châtelet's Theoretical Philosophy in Context Conference in Dublin, Ireland.
I'll be working on a commissioned chapter for Bloomsbury Press tentatively titled "Benjamin Franklin and Eugenio María de Hostos on Virtues".
In November, I presented the poster board version of my paper "Du Châtelet and Newton on the Criteria for Justified Hypotheses" (link here) at the PSA's 29th Biennial Conference in New Orleans, LA. This project is now titled "Du Châtelet on Newton's Method: The Cases of Universal Gravity and Geodesy"
In September, I presented my paper "Du Châtelet and Newton on the Criteria for Justified Hypotheses" at the Criticisms of Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophical Program Conference in Brussels, Belgium.
An abstract of my paper "Revisiting Newton's 'Probabilism'" is available upon request. I presented this at the University of York, UK for the 2024 BSPS conference.
An abstract of my forthcoming paper "Hypotheses in Natural Philosophy: Predictive Tools, or Underlying Causal Mechanisms?" is located here.
A presentation of my paper "Certainty and Law of Continuity in Du Châtelet's Institutions de physique" is located here, and slides are here. This was published in Les Études Philosophiques.
A presentation of my paper "The Metaphysical and Empirical Criteria in Newton's Hypotheses" is located here.
A PowerPoint on Leibniz's use of 'middle-term principles' or 'principles of discovery' in his essay Tentamen Anagogicum, here.
I presented this at the 2018 Libori Summer School.
Google Sites
Report abuse