•  761
    On the Mathematical Representation of Spacetime: A Case Study in Historical–Phenomenological Desedimentation
    New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 11 154-186. 2011.
    This essay is a contribution to the historical phenomenology of science, taking as its point of departure Husserl’s later philosophy of science and Jacob Klein’s seminal work on the emergence of the symbolic conception of number in European mathematics during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sinceneither Husserl nor Klein applied their ideas to actual theories of modern mathematical physics, this essay attempts to do so through a case study of the conceptof “spacetime.” In §1, I ske…Read more
  •  171
    Simone Weil is widely recognized today as one of the profound religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet while her interpretation of natural science is critical to Weil's overall understanding of religious faith, her writings on science have received little attention compared with her more overtly theological writings. The present essay, which builds on Vance Morgan's Weaving the World: Simone Weil on Science, Necessity, and Love (2005), critically examines Weil's interpretation of the his…Read more
  •  120
    Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy, by Walter Ott (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 52 (3): 379-381. 2012.
  •  40
    Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 29 (1): 227-251. 2008.
  •  36
    Muslim Perspectives on Stem Cell Research and Cloning
    with Fatima Agha Al-Hayani, Jacques Arnould, Ian G. Barbour, Marc Bekoff, Sjoerd L. Bonting, David Bradnick, Don Browning, John J. Carvalho Iv, and Philip Clayton
    Zygon 43 (4): 783-795. 2008.
    Abstract.In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascert…Read more
  •  22
    Cartesian Certainty and the Infinity of the Will
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 21 (4). 2004.
    This paper interprets Descartes' conception of "certainty" as most fundamentally a function of the human will, controlling the cognitive encounter with the world.
  •  21
    Freedom and the Human Person (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 64 (4): 885-888. 2011.
  •  21
    Beauty and the Destitution of Technology
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (1): 109-125. 2007.
    The tension between beauty and technology is evinced in the modern distinction within technē itself between technology and “fine art.” Yet while beauty,as Kant observes, is never a means to an end, neither is it an “end in itself.” Beauty points beyond itself while refusing subordination to human interests. Both its noninstrumentality and its self-transcending character I trace to the intrinsic necessity of the beautiful, which is essentially impersonal while paradoxically being an object of lov…Read more
  •  20
    The philosophy of physics literature contains conflicting claims on the heuristic significance of general covariance. Some authors maintain that Einstein's general relativity distinguishes itself from other theories in that it must be generally covariant, for example, while others argue that general covariance is a physically vacuous and trivial requirement applicable to virtually any theory. Moreover, when general covariance is invested with heuristic significance, that significance as a rule i…Read more
  •  12
    Relativity Without Spacetime
    Springer Verlag. 2018.
    In 1908, three years after Einstein first published his special theory of relativity, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski introduced his four-dimensional “spacetime” interpretation of the theory. Einstein initially dismissed Minkowski’s theory, remarking that “since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself anymore.” Yet Minkowski’s theory soon found wide acceptance among physicists, including eventually Einstein himself, whose conversion to Minkowski…Read more
  •  5
    Beauty and the Destitution of Technology
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (1): 109-125. 2007.
    The tension between beauty and technology is evinced in the modern distinction within technē itself between technology and “fine art.” Yet while beauty,as Kant observes, is never a means to an end, neither is it an “end in itself.” Beauty points beyond itself while refusing subordination to human interests. Both its noninstrumentality and its self-transcending character I trace to the intrinsic necessity of the beautiful, which is essentially impersonal while paradoxically being an object of lov…Read more
  • The goal of the modern scientific project, as defined by such thinkers as Descartes and Bacon, is "mastery of nature." Martin Heidegger, in an interpretation of mastery of nature that has left its imprint on post-modern critique of science, maintains that the essence of modern science lies in a projection of "technological being" upon nature. This projective "assault" has its origin in the "self-grounding" project of modern metaphysics, in which the human subject attempts to secure a self-suffic…Read more