Research

My area of expertise is early modern philosophy. In my primary project, I study the justification and role of hypotheses in natural philosophy and scientific inquiry. Some questions that guide my research are the following: what methods are used in arriving at scientific knowledge as opposed to mathematical knowledge? What were hypotheses and when did they become knowledge? What were the aims of these methods (probability, certainty, or understanding, or something else)? I focus on the answers to these questions that figures like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, and Du Châtelet have provided. Collectively, my papers defend a pluralistic view of the role of hypotheses in the early modern period, challenging the existing literature's tendency in distinguishing between a instrumentalist and a causalist (or realist) approach to hypotheses (as articulated by Ducheyne, Westfall, et al.). These results will form the basis of a book on hypotheses in the early modern period.

I have an emerging project in Latin American philosophy and political philosophy. I investigate what intellectual and civic virtues are necessary to resist colonialism and religious authority given theories of a just polity. Currently, I am pursuing this line of inquiry in the thought of Novohispanic nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Puerto Rican philosopher and abolitionist Eugenio María de Hostos. My forthcoming chapter "Benjamin Franklin and Eugenio María de Hostos: Moral Education, the Ideal Citizen, and Virtues in the Americas," and forthcoming paper "Reason and Resistance in Sor Juana" investigate these authors's theories of civic and epistemic resistance.

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 November 2026, I will present my paper "Reason and Resistance in Sor Juana" at the Southwestern Philosophical Society 88th Annual Meeting.

In October 2026, I will present my paper "Truths of Fact and Truths of Reason in Leibniz's Theory of Hypotheses" at the Leibniz Society of North America Annual Conference.

For July 2026, I presented my paper "Du Châtelet on Newton's Method: The Cases of Universal Gravity and Geodesy" at the 25th Princeton–Nuremberg–Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

For June 2026, my paper "Revisiting Newton’s ‘Probabilism’" has been accepted for presentation at HOPOS 2026, to be held at Ohio State University.

For May 2026, I was invited to participate in my first unconference!: Open-Air Learning: An Unconference on Teaching Outdoors in Higher Education at Elon University.

For March 2026, I will presented my work "Expertise and Membership in the Early Royal Society" at the University of Notre Dame HPS annual conference on Science, Expertise, and Society.

In January 2026, I presented my paper "Revisiting Newton's 'Probabilism'" at the Hopkins Seminar in Early and Late Modern Philosophy.

In January 2026, I commented on Frank Hu's paper on Samuel Clarke, the PSR, and the Identity of Indiscernibles at the Eastern APA.

For summer and fall of 2025, I used the APA Berry Fund in Public Philosophy to host a series of "Philosophy in Nature" sessions. Details here!: http://bit.ly/philnat

In June 2025, I attended the University of Minnesota's 2025 Summer Program at the Center for Canon Expansion and Change.

In May 2025, 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".

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