-
64Descartes’s Dilemma of Eminent ContainmentDialogue 42 (1): 3-. 2003.In his recent survey of the “dialectic of creation” in seventeenth-century philosophy, Thomas Lennon has suggested that Descartes’s assumptions about causality encourage a kind of “pantheistic emanationism”. Lennon notes that Descartes regularly invokes the principle that there is nothing in the effect which was not previously present, either formally or eminently, in the cause. Descartes also believes that God is the continuous, total, and efficient cause of everything. From these assumptions i…Read more
-
80The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal GodBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2). 2013.(2013). The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal God. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 240-261. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.692663
-
51Planck's principle and jeans's conversionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 22 (3): 471-497. 1991.
-
97God and the natural world in the seventeenth century: Space, time, and causalityPhilosophy Compass 4 (5): 859-872. 2009.The employment by seventeenth-century natural philosophers of stock theological notions like creation, immensity, and eternity in the articulation and justification of emerging physical programs disrupted a delicate but longstanding balance between transcendent and immanent conceptions of God. By playing a prominent (if not always leading) role in many of the major scientific developments of the period, God became more intimately involved with natural processes than at any time since antiquity. …Read more
-
14Causation and similarity in DescartesIn Gennaro Rocco & Huenemann Charles (eds.), New Essays on the Rationalists, Oxford University Press. pp. 296--309. 1999.
-
79Spinoza on the Ideality of TimeIdealistic Studies 43 (1-2): 27-40. 2013.When McTaggart puts Spinoza on his short list of philosophers who considered time unreal, he is falling in line with a reading of Spinoza’s philosophy of time advanced by contemporaneous British Idealists and by Hegel. The idealists understood that there is much at stake concerning the ontological status of Spinozistic time. If time is essential to motion then temporal idealism entails that nearly everything—apart from God conceived sub specie aeternitatis—is imaginary. I argue that although tim…Read more
-
58Mind-body dualism and the Harvey-Descartes controversyJournal of the History of Ideas 55 (2): 211-234. 1994.Descartes and William Harvey engaged in a polite dispute about the cause of the heart's motion. Descartes saw the heart's motion of passive; Harvey saw it as active. I criticize three prominent explanations for Descartes' opposition to Harvey's theory. I argue that Descartes found Harvey's model to be inconsistent with mind-body dualism and this was the reason he opposed it
-
300Introduction to Special Issue on Seventeenth Century Absolute Space and TimeIntellectual History Review 22 (1): 1-3. 2012.The articles that comprise this special issue of Intellectual History Review are briefly described.
-
104Descartes on Time and DurationEarly Science and Medicine 12 (1): 28-54. 2007.Descartes' account of the material world relies heavily on time. Most importantly, time is a component of speed, which figures in his fundamental conservation principle and laws. However, in his most systematic discussion of the concept, time is treated as some-how reducible both to thought and to motion. Such reductionistic views, while common among Descartes' late scholastic contemporaries, are very ill-suited to Cartesian physics. I show that, in spite of the apparent identifications with tho…Read more
-
13Descartes’s Dilemma of Eminent ContainmentDialogue 42 (1): 3-26. 2003.RésuméDans sa présentation récente de la «dialectique de la création» dans la philosophie du XVIIe siècle, Thomas Lennon suggère que les hypothèses de Descartes concernant la causalité conduisent à un dilemme : Descartes doit accepter soit une certaine sorte d'émanationnisme panthéiste, soit l'émergence de la réalité ex. nihilo. Dans cet article, je défends en détail cette suggestion de Lennon. Au cœur de la question se trouve la notion cartesienne de la possession éminente. Si cette notion est …Read more
-
32‘The Twin-Brother of Space’: Spatial Analogy in the Emergence of Absolute TimeIntellectual History Review 22 (1): 23-39. 2012.Seventeenth-century authors frequently infer the attributes of time by analogy from already established features of space. The rationale for this can be traced back to Aristotle's analysis of time as ?the number of movement?, where movement requires a prior understanding of spatial magnitude. Although these authors are anti-Aristotelian, they were concerned, contra Aristotle, to establish the existence of ?empty space?, and a notion of absolute space which fit this idea. Although they had no ind…Read more
-
20Review of Christia Mercer (ed.), Eileen O'Neill (ed.), Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (9). 2005.
-
1John Leslie, The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 18 (2): 122-124. 1998.
-
84Descartes on God's relation to timeReligious Studies 44 (4): 413-431. 2008.God and time play crucial, intricately related roles in Descartes' project of grounding mathematical physics on metaphysical first principles. This naturally raises the perennial theological question of God's precise relation to time. I argue, against the strong current of recent commentary, that Descartes' God is fully temporal. This means that God's duration is successive, with parts ordered 'before and after', rather than permanent or 'all at once'. My argument will underscore the seamless co…Read more
-
135Cartesian causation: Continuous, instantaneous, overdeterminedJournal of the History of Philosophy 42 (4): 389-423. 2004.: Descartes provides an original and puzzling argument for the traditional theological doctrine that the world is continuously created by God. His key premise is that the parts of the duration of anything are "completely independent" of one another. I argue that Descartes derives this temporal independence thesis simply from the principle that causes are necessarily simultaneous with their effects. I argue further that it follows from Descartes's version of the continuous creation doctrine that …Read more
-
118The Concept of Truth in Feminist SciencesHypatia 10 (3). 1995.If we view the aim of feminist science as truthlikeness, instead of either absolute or relative truth, then we can explain the sense in which the feminist sciences bring an objective advance in knowledge without implicating One True Theory. I argue that a certain non-linguistic theory of truthlikeness is especially well-suited to this purpose and complements the feminist epistemologies of Harding, Haraway, and Longino.
-
118Newton on God's Relation to Space and Time: The Cartesian FrameworkArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93 (3): 281-320. 2011.Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz, philosophers have been puzzled by the close yet ambivalent association in Newton's ontology between God and absolute space and time. The 1962 publication of Newton's highly philosophical manuscript De Gravitatione has enriched our understanding of his subtle, sometimes cryptic, remarks on the divine underpinnings of space and time in better-known published works. But it has certainly not produced a scholarly consensus about Newton's exact position. In fact, t…Read more
-
53Does Scientific Realism Beg the Question?Informal Logic 18 (2). 1996.In a series of influential articles, the anti-realist Arthur Fine has repeatedly charged that a certain very popular argument for scientific realism, that only realism can explain the instrumental success of science, begs the question. I argue that on no plausible reading ofthe fallacy does the realist argument beg the question. In fact, Fine is himself guilty of what DeMorgan called the "opponent fallacy.".
-
26Walter Ott. Causation & Laws in Early Modern Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xii+260. $75.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 371-375. 2011.
-
52Similarity as an Intertheory RelationPhilosophy of Science 63 (5). 1996.In line with the semantic conception of scientific theories, I develop an account of the intertheory relation of comparative structural similarity. I argue that this relation is useful in explaining the concept of verisimilitude and I support this contention with a concrete historical example. Finally, I defend this relation against the familiar charge that the concept of similarity is insufficiently objective.
Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
General Philosophy of Science |