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Kant, Philosophy, and the PublicIn Salomo Friedlaender (ed.), Kant for Children, De Gruyter. pp. 67-84. 2024.
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Biased, Spasmodic, and Ridiculously Incomplete: Sequence Stratigraphy and the Emergence of a New Approach to Stratigraphic Complexity in Paleobiology, 1973–1995Journal of the History of Biology 56 (3): 419-454. 2023.This paper examines the emergence of a new approach to stratigraphic complexity, first in geology and then, following its creative appropriation, in paleobiology. The approach was associated with a set of models that together transformed stratigraphic geology in the decades following 1970. These included the influential models of depositional sequences developed by Peter Vail and others at Exxon. Transposed into paleobiology, they gave researchers new resources for studying the incompleteness of…Read more
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Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from SomewhereOxford University Press. 2023.Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his core philosophy. They also assume that racism contradicts his moral theory. In this book, philosopher Huaping Lu-Adler challenges both assumptions. She shows how Kant's raciology--divided into racialism and racism--is integral to his philosophical system. She also rejects the individualistic approach to Kant and racism. Instead, she uses the notio…Read more
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Uniformitarianism Re-Examined, or the Present is the Key to the Past, Except When It Isn’t (And Even Then It Kind of Is)Perspectives on Science 31 (4): 405-436. 2023.Perhaps no term in the geological lexicon excites more passions than uniformitarianism, whose motto is “the present is the key to the past.” The term is controversial in part because it contains several meanings, which have been implicated in creating a situation of “semantic chaos” in the geological literature. Yet I argue that debates about uniformitarianism do not arise from a simple chaos of meanings. Instead, they arise from legitimate disagreements about substantive questions. This paper e…Read more
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Measuring Time with Fossils: A Start-Up Problem in Scientific PracticePhilosophy of Science 88 (5): 940-950. 2021.This article is about a start-up problem in scientific practice. Specifically, it is about the problem of justifying paleontological correlation—the practice of using fossils to establish time relations among fossiliferous rocks. Paleontological correlation was the key to assembling a geological timescale during the nineteenth century and remains an important practice in stratigraphic geology to this day. Yet contrary to philosophical expectations, this practice lacked a robust theoretical justi…Read more
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Between Du Châtelet’s Leibniz Exegesis and Kant’s Early Philosophy: A Study of Their Responses to the vis viva ControversyHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 21 (1): 177-94. 2018.This paper examines Du Châtelet’s and Kant’s responses to the famous vis viva controversy – Du Châtelet in her Institutions Physiques (1742) and Kant in his debut, the Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746–49). The Institutions was not only a highly influential contribution to the vis viva controversy, but also a pioneering attempt to integrate Leibnizian metaphysics and Newtonian physics. The young Kant’s evident knowledge of this work has led some to speculate about his indebt…Read more
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