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47Descartes among the NovatoresRes Philosophica 92 (1): 1-19. 2015.In the Discours de la méthode, Descartes presents himself as a heroic figure, standing up against the current Aristotelian orthodoxy in philosophy, and offering something new, a mechanist physics and the metaphysics to go along with it. But Descartes was by no means the only challenger to Aristotelian natural philosophy: by Descartes’s day, there were many. Descartes was read as one of this group, generally called the novatores (innovators) in Latin, and often severely criticized for their advoc…Read more
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47A Point of Order: Analysis, Synthesis, and Descartes's PrinciplesArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 64 (2): 136-147. 1982.
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46Leibniz (review)The Leibniz Review 6 61-106. 1996.Robert M. Adams’s Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist will be a landmark in Leibniz scholarship. It is a privilege to be asked to comment on it.
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44Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have Told ElisabethSouthern Journal of Philosophy 21 (S1): 15-32. 1983.
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44Some Additional (But Not Final) WordsJournal of the History of Philosophy 53 (3): 537-539. 2015.i would like to thank Michael Della Rocca for his thoughtful response to my remarks. Needless to say, I am not entirely convinced by everything he says, but I am also sure that he did not think that I would be! The substantive points on which we differ are complex, and deserve careful consideration and argument; this is not the occasion on which to thrash out those differences. But I would like to add a few words about the methodological differences that Della Rocca notes at the end of his contr…Read more
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37After Certainty: A History of Our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions by Robert PasnauPhilosophical Review 129 (4): 656-660. 2020.
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36Life and Death in Early Modern PhilosophyMind. forthcoming.The life sciences have been very much in vogue these days in the history of early modern philosophy. In the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, historians of philosophy c.
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34Leibniz on Form and MatterEarly Science and Medicine 2 (3): 326-351. 1997.This paper discusses the Aristotelian notions of matter and form as they are treated in the philosophy of Leibniz. The discussion is divided into three parts, corresponding to three periods in Leibniz's development. In the earliest period, as exemplified in a 1669 letter to his former mentor Jakob Thomasius, Leibniz argues that matter and form can be given straightforward interpretations in terms of size and shape, basic categories in the new mechanical philosophy. In Leibniz's middle years, on …Read more
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30Pascal: Reasoning and Belief by Michael MoriartyJournal of the History of Philosophy 60 (3): 506-508. 2022.The Pensées is a difficult book. When originally published in 1670, eight years after Pascal’s death, it was simply a collection of “thoughts” or pensées found among his papers after his death. Modern editors have based their editions on two seventeenth-century copies that group many of the fragments into thematic groups that purport to reflect Pascal’s own organization. Even so, the Pensées is still a collection of fragments. The reader, particularly the first-time reader, needs a guide.It was …Read more
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29Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain by John W. Yolton (review)Journal of Philosophy 82 (12): 729-734. 1985.
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28Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume 2 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2005.Oxford University Press is proud to present the second volume in a new annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of philosophy. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It will also publish papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are impo…Read more
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27Margaret Cavendish among the BaconiansJournal of Early Modern Studies 9 (2): 53-84. 2020.Margaret Cavendish is a very difficult thinker to place in context. Given her stern critique of the “experimental philosophy” in the Observations on the Experimental Philosophy, one might be tempted to place Cavendish among the opponents of Francis Bacon and his experimental thought. But, I argue, her relation to Baconianism is much more subtle than that would suggest. I begin with an overview of Cavendish’s philosophical program, focusing mainly on her later natural philosophical thought in Ph…Read more
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26Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (3): 400-401. 2002.Daniel Garber - Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 400-401 Book Review Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century Antonio Clericuzio. Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. Pp. xi + 223. Clot…Read more
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24O que Mersenne aprendeu na ItáliaDiscurso 31 89-114. 2000.Estudos sobre Marin Mersenne enfatizam freqüentemente o serviço prestado por ele à ciência européia, por ajudar na circulação das idéias, tanto pela correspondência como por suas publicações. Mas o próprio Mersenne foi uma figura importante na Revolução Científica com seu próprio programa intelectual. O propósito do artigo é discutir o papel que o contato epistolar com a Itália exerceu no seu próprio desenvolvimento intelectual. Quero discutir também que a transmissão da ciência italiana para a …Read more
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23Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Vol. 4 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2008.Note from the Editors Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy covers the period that begins, very roughly, ... The core of the subject matter is, of course, philosophy and its history. But the volume's papers reflect the fact that ...
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22Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press , xii+242 pp., $27.50 , $17.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 78 (3): 527-531. 2011.
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21Bacon’s Metaphysical MethodEpistemology and Philosophy of Science 58 (3): 22-37. 2021.In this paper, I would like to examine the method that Bacon proposes in Novum organum II.1-20 and illustrates with the example of the procedure for discovering the form of heat. One might think of a scientific method as a general schema for research into nature, one that can, in principle, be used independently of the particular conception of the natural world which one adopts, and independently of the particular scientific domain with which one is concerned. Indeed, Bacon himself suggested tha…Read more
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21Fact, Fiction and Error in Bacon and the Royal SocietyRivista di Storia Della Filosofia 71 (4): 563-578. 2016.
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19Leibniz on body, force and extension 1Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (3): 363-384. 2005.
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19Dead Force, Infinitesimals, and the Mathematicization of NatureIn Douglas Jesseph & Ursula Goldenbaum (eds.), Infinitesimal Differences: Controversies Between Leibniz and His Contemporaries, Walter De Gruyter. 2008.
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Interest
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |