• My purpose in this book is to reach a more general audience than I have been able to reach through my publications in academic journals, such as Environmental Ethics. The strategy of the book is to use a lyrical personal narrative to motivate chapters advancing the case for the intelligence of all living things, our kinship with, similarities to, and dependency upon other life forms, and an ethic of respect for life. It includes a critique of biocidal aspects of our culture, especially as it per…Read more
  • Neither Angel nor Beast: The Life and Work of Blaise Pascal
    with Francis X. J. Coleman
    Noûs 23 (1): 115-116. 1989.
  •  8
    Argument in Pascal's Pensées
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 6 (1). 1989.
  •  6
    Philosopher Daniel C. Fouke sheds the light of rhetorical analysis on a subversive thinker whose challenges to institutional authority have awakened recent scholarly interest. John Toland was a controversial Irish-born British freethinker, satirist, and critic of traditional Christianity. His work Christianity Not Mysterious, now considered a classic exposition of deism, provoked outrage in its time, but eventually led to a healthy skepticism regarding the historical reliability of the biblical …Read more
  • Pascal's physics
    In Nicholas Hammond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Pascal, Cambridge University Press. pp. 75--101. 2003.
  • Cet essai suit le developpement de la conception leibnizienne des corps durant la période parisienne, faisant parriculiérement attention a les idées qui se manifestent en ses critiques de Descartes. Dans la métaphysique de Leibniz de Theoria Motus abstracti de 1671, les corps ne sont des esprits vrais que par analogie, et ce n'est que durant 1676 que les esprits vrais deviennent complétement incorporés dans la conception leibnizienne des corps. L'adoption des vrais esprits corporels par Leibniz …Read more
  •  15
    The ArgumentThe claim that Jan Swammerdam's empirical research did not support his theory of biological preformation is shown to rest on a notion of evidence narrower than that used by many seventeenth-century natural philosophers. The principles of evidence behind the use of mechanical models are developed. It is then shown that the Cartesian theory of biological reproduction and embryology failed to gain acceptance because it did not meet the evidential requirements of these principles. The pr…Read more
  • Metaphysics and the Eucharist in the Early Leibniz
    Studia Leibnitiana 24 (2): 145-159. 1992.
    Cet article essaie de reconstruire les raisons complexes des changements successifs dans la relation entre le métaphysique de Leibniz dans ses écrits de jeunesse et son intérêt personnel dans l'apologétique et la réunion des Eglises. Je soutiens que, tandis que l'effort primitif de Leibniz pour lier l'intelligibilité de la Philosophie Mécanique au théisme le porta à mettre l'accent sur Dieu comme Moteur Premier, son désir croissant de défendre l'intelligibilité de la Transubstantiation inspira l…Read more
  •  967
    Blameworthy Environmental Beliefs
    Environmental Ethics 34 (2): 115-134. 2012.
    Thomas Hill famously argued that what really bothers us about environmental degradation is best discovered by asking “What kind of person would do such a thing?” Beliefs, some of which are blameworthy, are among the things that define what kind of person one is. What we care about is reflected in whether one’s epistemic practices align with one’s core moral convictions and common standards of decency. Our moral sensitivities are reflected in what we attend to and reflect upon. What we do not not…Read more
  •  540
    Humans and the Soil
    Environmental Ethics 33 (2): 147-161. 2011.
    The way we farm, the kinds of backyards and landscapes we favor, and the way we control patterns of development are creating an invisible crisis through their affects upon soil ecology. The invisibility of soil ecosystems, the seemingly alien properties of the organisms that inhabit them, and the specialized knowledge required to understand them create obstacles to moral concern for these fountains of life. Our treatment of soils has reached the point of crisis. Obstacles to moral thinking about…Read more