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49Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This volume contains essays that examine infinity in early modern philosophy. The essays not only consider the ways that key figures viewed the concept. They also detail how these different beliefs about infinity influenced major philosophical systems throughout the era. These domains include mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, science, and theology. Coverage begins with an introduction that outlines the overall importance of infinity to early modern philosophy. It then moves from a …Read more
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IntroductionIn The Language of Nature: Reassessing the Mathematization of Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, University of Minnesota Press. 2016.
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10The Stoic Roots of Hobbes's Natural Philosophy and First PhilosophyIn Marcus P. Adams (ed.), A Companion to Hobbes, Wiley-blackwell. 2021.This chapter identifies three main sources of the Stoic elements in Hobbes's philosophy: the early Christian‐Stoic Tertullian, the modern “Neo‐Stoic” school of Justus Lipsius, and the natural philosophers of the Cavendish Circle he frequented. Perhaps the most direct Stoical impact on Hobbes was the second/third century Church Father Tertullian. Hobbes and Cavendish are at bottom kindred Stoic spirits, though their systems diverge on the precise nature of material activity. The chapter explores …Read more
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5Early Modern Philosophical Theology in Great BritainIn Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Religious Knowledge: Skepticism, Fideism, Reasonableness Atheism and Deism Science and Religion Biblical Criticism and the History of Religion Materialism and Immaterialism God, Space, and Time Creation, Freedom, and Laws of Nature Works cited.
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49Early American Immaterialism: Samuel Johnson's Emendations of BerkeleyTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 54 (4): 441. 2018.Richard Popkin opened an early paper with the observation "No figure in the history of European philosophy has had a more direct and enduring influence on American thought than George Berkeley."2 Popkin's case for Berkeley's "enduring" influence well into classical pragmatism is compelling.3 But in what follows I will be concerned with his more "direct" influence on the Connecticut philosopher and theologian Samuel Johnson —not to be confused with the English stone-kicking confuter of Berkeley—d…Read more
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26Norman Kemp Smith on the experience of durationBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (2): 295-313. 2022.The Scottish philosopher Norman Kemp Smith (1872–1958) is best known for his 1929 English translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and for his incisive commentaries on Descartes, Hume, and Kant. These achievements have overshadowed his original philosophical work in several areas, including the experience of time. A realist with idealist sympathies, Kemp Smith developed a non-transcendental version of Kant’s conception of time as a ‘pure intuition’ (though he insisted that temporal percept…Read more
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13Andrew Janiak, ed. Space: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 368. $105.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-19-991410-4 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 322-325. 2022.
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24Review of Andrew Janiak: Space: a history (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 322-325. 2022.
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68Locke on Space, Time, and GodErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7. 2020.Locke is famed for his caution in speculative matters: “Men, extending their enquiries beyond their capacities and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing; ‘tis no wonder that they raise questions and multiply disputes”. And he is skeptical about the pretensions of natural philosophy, which he says is “not capable of being made a science”. And yet Locke is confident that “Our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that ther…Read more
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Locke and Newton on Space and Time and Their Sensible MeasuresIn Zvi Biener & Eric Schliesser (eds.), Newton and Empiricism, . pp. 119-137. 2014.It is well-known that Isaac Newton’s conception of space and time as absolute -- “without reference to anything external” (Principia, 408) -- was anticipated, and probably influenced, by a number of figures among the earlier generation of seventeenth century natural philosophers, including Pierre Gassendi, Henry More, and Newton’s own teacher Isaac Barrow. The absolutism of Newton’s contemporary and friend, John Locke, has received much less attention, which is unfortunate for several reasons. …Read more
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564Hobbes and EvilIn Chad Meister & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, Routledge. 2018.
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669Descartes on the Infinity of Space vs. TimeIn Ohad Nachtomy & Reed Winegar (eds.), Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy, Brill. pp. 45-61. 2018.In two rarely discussed passages – from unpublished notes on the Principles of Philosophy and a 1647 letter to Chanut – Descartes argues that the question of the infinite extension of space is importantly different from the infinity of time. In both passages, he is anxious to block the application of his well-known argument for the indefinite extension of space to time, in order to avoid the theologically problematic implication that the world has no beginning. Descartes concedes that we always …Read more
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The Structure of Theoretical ProgressDissertation, University of Minnesota. 1994.I develop a new theory of theoretical progress or 'truthlikeness'. Unlike previous theories, my approach focuses on the sets of models of scientific theories, rather than their linguistic formulations. Such an approach, I argue, avoids several long-standing problems in the philosophy of theoretical progress. I find in Chapter One that the most prominent schools of twentieth century philosophy of science have all failed to account for theoretical progress. I further argue that such an account is …Read more
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8The Language of Nature: Reassessing the Mathematization of Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (edited book)University of Minnesota Press. 2016.Although the mathematization of nature is a distinctive and crucial feature of the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, this volume shows that it was a far more complex, contested, and context-dependent phenomenon than the received historiography has indicated.0.
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49From form to mechanism: Helen Hattab: Descartes on forms and mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, x+236 pp, US$ 90.00 HBMetascience 20 (2): 287-290. 2010.From form to mechanism Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9455-7 Authors Geoffrey Gorham, Department of Philosophy, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
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2David Hausman and Alan Hausman, Descartes's Legacy: Minds and Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 18 (4): 264-266. 1998.
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9Stephen Gaukroger , Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680 -1760 . Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 31 (4): 274-277. 2011.
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20‘The Twin-Brother of Space’: Spatial Analogy in the Emergence of Absolute TimeIntellectual History Review 22 (1): 23-39. 2012.
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82Mixing Bodily Fluids: Hobbes’s Stoic GodSophia 53 (1): 33-49. 2014.The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I mainta…Read more
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102Descartes on the Innateness of All IdeasCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (3). 2002.Though Descartes is traditionally associated with the moderately nativist doctrine that our ideas of God, of eternal truths, and of true and immutable natures are innate, on two occasions he explicitly argued that all of our ideas, even sensory ideas, are innate in the mind. One reason it is surprising to find Descartes endorsing universal innateness is that such a view seems to leave no role for bodies in the production of our ideas of them.
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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
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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
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51Planck's principle and jeans's conversionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 22 (3): 471-497. 1991.
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96God 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
Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
General Philosophy of Science |