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Wijsbegeerte tussen wetenschap en moraal in een post-Newtoniaanse wereld: Berkeley, Hume en Adam SmithAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 100 (3): 244-246. 2008.
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950This chapter argues that the standard conception of Spinoza as a fellow-travelling mechanical philosopher and proto-scientific naturalist is misleading. It argues, first, that Spinoza’s account of the proper method for the study of nature presented in the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) points away from the one commonly associated with the mechanical philosophy. Moreover, throughout his works Spinoza’s views on the very possibility of knowledge of nature are decidedly sceptical (as specifie…Read more
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27The Newtonian refutation of Spinoza: Newton's challenge and the socratic problemIn Andrew Janiak & Eric Schliesser (eds.), Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 299--319. 2012.
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72When Christiaan Huygens prepared the 1686/1687 expedition to the Cape of Good Hope on which his pendulum clocks were to be tested for their usefulness in measuring longitude at sea, he also gave instructions to Thomas Helder to perform experiments with the seconds-pendulum. This was prompted by Jean Richer's 1672 finding that a seconds-pendulum is 1 1/4 lines shorter in Cayenne than in Paris. Unfortunately, Helder died on the voy¬age, and no data from the seconds-pendulum ever reached Huygens. H…Read more
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35Toland and Adam Smith's Posthumous WorkDiametros 40 115-125. 2014.In this paper I offer a speculative answer to the question why Adam Smith, who burned nearly all of his papers, arranged for posthumous publication for a number of his essays. I rely on a number of hints in those essays and put them in the context of eighteenth century natural philosophy. I argue that those hints trace back to John Toland and Spinozism
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82Four Species of Reflexivity and History of Economics in Economic Policy ScienceJournal of the Philosophy of History 5 (3): 425-445. 2011.This paper argues that history of economics has a fruitful, underappreciated role to play in the development of economics, especially when understood as a policy science. This goes against the grain of the last half century during which economics, which has undergone a formal revolution, has distanced itself from its `literary' past and practices precisely with the aim to be a more successful policy science. The paper motivates the thesis by identifying and distinguishing four kinds of reflexivi…Read more
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230My critical comments on Part I of P. J. E. Kail's Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy are divided into two parts. First, I challenge the exegetical details of Kail's take on Hume's important distinction between natural and philosophical relations. I show that Kail misreads Hume in a subtle fashion. If I am right, then much of the machinery that Kail puts into place for his main argument does different work in Hume than Kail thinks. Second, I offer a brief criticism of Kail's argument for…Read more
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222Newton’s Challenge to Philosophy: A Programmatic EssayHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 101-128. 2011.I identify a set of interlocking views that became (and still are) very influential within philosophy in the wake of Newton’s success. These views use the authority of natural philosophy/mechanics to settle debates within philosophy. I label these “Newton’s Challenge.”
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117In this paper I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein’s claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1…Read more
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86Interpreting Spinoza: Critical EssaysBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (4). 2011.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 822-826, July 2011
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84Spinoza's Conatus as an essence preserving, attribute-neutral immanent cause: toward a new interpretation of attributes and modesIn Keith Allen & Tom Stoneham (eds.), Causation and Modern Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 3--65. 2011.
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176Hume's missing shade of blue reconsidered from a Newtonian PerspectiveJournal of Scottish Philosophy 2 (2): 164-175. 2004.Click to decrease image size.
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Review of James Otteson's Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life (review)Philosophy in Review 23 364-6. 2003.
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42Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, by Catherine WilsonMind 119 (474): 535-539. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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184Women in Early Analytic Philosophy: Volume IntroductionJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (2). 2017.Introduction to the special issue including papers about Susan Stebbing, Susanne Langer and Maria Kokoszyńska.
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21Private epistemic virtue, public vices: moral responsibility in the policy sciencesExperts and Consensus in Social Science 50 275-295. 2014.In this chapter we address what we call “The-Everybody-Did-It” (TEDI) Syndrome, a symptom for collective negligence. Our main thesis is that the character of scientific communities can be evaluated morally and be found wanting in terms of moral responsibility. Even an epistemically successful scientific community can be morally responsible for consequences that were unforeseen by it and its members and that follow from policy advice given by its individual members. We motivate our account by a c…Read more
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67Newton and Newtonianism in eighteenth-century british thoughtIn James A. Harris (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford University Press. pp. 41. 2013.This chapter describes various aspects of the impact on philosophy of Newton’s Principia. It shows how Newton’s achievement dramatically influenced debates over the way subsequent philosophers conceived of their activity, and thus prepared the way for an institutional and methodological split between philosophy and science. These large-scale themes are illustrated by attention to a number of detailed debates over the nature and importance of Newton’s legacy: debates concerning gravity and matter…Read more
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79“The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher”: Adam Smith’s Reflections on Hume’s LifeHume Studies 29 (2): 327-362. 2003.
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22Insiders and outsiders in seventeenth-century philosophyNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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12211. “Two Definitions of ‘Cause,’ Newton, and the Significance of the Humean distinction between Natural and Philosophical Relations,”Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 5 (1): 83-101. 2007.The main aim of this paper is to explore why it is so important for Hume to defi ne ‘cause’ as he does. This will shed light on the signifi cance of the natural/philosophical relation (hereafter NPR) distinction in the Treatise. Hume's use of the NPR distinction allows him to dismiss on general grounds conceptions of causation at odds with his own. In particular, it allows him to avoid having to engage in detailed re-interpretation of potentially confl icting theories formulated by natural philo…Read more
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112In this paper I clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental quality of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity i…Read more
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45Review of Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton (eds.), Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (8). 2008.
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25Critical Notice: New Essays on David Hume (review)Journal of Scottish Philosophy 6 (2): 203-208. 2008.
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307Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of NatureFoundations of Science 18 (3): 449-466. 2013.The first two sections of this paper investigate what Newton could have meant in a now famous passage from “De Graviatione” (hereafter “DeGrav”) that “space is as it were an emanative effect of God.” First it offers a careful examination of the four key passages within DeGrav that bear on this. The paper shows that the internal logic of Newton’s argument permits several interpretations. In doing so, the paper calls attention to a Spinozistic strain in Newton’s thought. Second it sketches four in…Read more
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