•  587
    The Immanent Contingency of Physical Laws in Leibniz’s Dynamics
    In Rodolfo Garau & Pietro Omodeo (eds.), Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science, Springer Verlag. pp. 289-316. 2019.
    This paper focuses on Leibniz’s conception of modality and its application to the issue of natural laws. The core of Leibniz’s investigation of the modality of natural laws lays in the distinction between necessary, geometrical laws on the one hand, and contingent, physical laws of nature on the other. For Leibniz, the contingency of physical laws entailed the assumption of the existence of an additional form of causality beyond mechanical or efficient ones. While geometrical truths, being neces…Read more
  •  511
    Potentia, actio, vis: the Quantity mv2 and its Causal Role
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100 (4): 411-443. 2018.
    This article aims to interpret Leibniz’s dynamics project through a theory of the causation of corporeal motion. It presents an interpretation of the dynamics that characterizes physical causation as the structural organization of phenomena. The measure of living force by mv2 must then be understood as an organizational property of motion conceptually distinct from the geometrical or otherwise quantitative magnitudes exchanged in mechanical phenomena. To defend this view, we examine one of the m…Read more
  •  462
    Mechanism: Mathematical Laws
    Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. 2020.
  •  72
    Actual and Ideal Infinitesimals in Leibniz’s Specimen Dynamicum
    Journal of Early Modern Studies 5 (1): 115-142. 2016.
    This article aims to treat the question of the reality of Leibniz’s infinitesimals from the perspective of their application in his account of corporeal motion. Rather than beginning with logical foundations or mathematical methodology, I analyze Leibniz’s use of an allegedly “instantiated” infinitesimal magnitude in his treatment of dead force in the Specimen Dynamicum. In this analysis I critique the interpretive strategy that uses the Leibnizian distinction, drawn from the often cited 1706 le…Read more
  •  52
    A central controversy in the reception of Leibniz’s philosophy, not only during his lifetime, but also in the immediately posthumous period and more recently, concerns the role that substantial forms play in Leibniz’s ontology. Interpreters like Garber argue that the Leibnizian defense of the quasi-Scholastic substantial forms in the 1680’s-1690’s demonstrate an ontology of corporeal substance irreducible to an idealist ontology. On the other hand interpreters like Adams argue that corporeal sub…Read more
  •  37
    The Consistency of Inconsistency
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 12 (2): 70-92. 2008.
    Alain Badiou’s reception in the English-speaking world has centred on his project of a “mathematical ontology” undertaken in Being and Event. Its reception has raised serious concerns about how mathematics could be relevant to concrete situations. Caution must be taken in applying mathematics to concrete situationsand, without making explicit the equivocal senses of “consistency” as it operates in Badiou’s thought, this caution cannot be precisely applied. By examining Being and Event as well as…Read more
  •  30
    This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy
  •  25
    Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics
    Springer International Publishing. 2017.
    This book presents a systematic reconstruction of Leibniz’s dynamics project (c. 1676-1700) that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concepts of physical causality in Leibniz’s work and 17th century physics. It argues that Leibniz’s theory of forces privileges the causal relationship between structural organization and physical phenomena instead of body-to-body mechanical causation. The mature conception of Leibnizian force is not the power of one body to cause motion in ano…Read more
  •  18
    In this article, I address two different kinds of equivocations in reading Leibniz’s fictional infinite and infinitesimal. These equivocations form the background of a reductive reading of infinite and infinitesimal fictions either as ultimately finite or as something whose status can be taken together with any other mathematical object as such. The first equivocation is the association of a foundation of infinitesimals with their ontological status. I analyze this equivocation by criticizing th…Read more
  •  10
    Leibniz studies is a distinctive kind of joy. The seventeenth-century polymath made remarkable impacts in a wide-ranging number of domains and their subdomains. The attempt to study one domain in d...
  •  10
    A miracle creed: the principle of optimality in Leibniz’s physics and philosophy
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (6): 1289-1294. 2023.
    Leibniz studies is a distinctive kind of joy. The seventeenth-century polymath made remarkable impacts in a wide-ranging number of domains and their subdomains. The attempt to study one domain in d...
  •  8
    This paper argues that Cantorian transfinite cardinality is not a necessary assumption for the ontological claims in Badiou’s L’Être et l’Événement. The necessary structure for Badiou’s mathematical ontology in this work was only the ordinality of sets. The method for reckoning the sizes of sets was only assumed to follow the standard Cantorian measure. In the face of different and compelling forms of measuring non-finite sets, it is argued that Badiou’s project can indeed accommodate this plura…Read more
  •  6
    In The Concept of Model Alain Badiou establishes a new logical ’concept of model’. Translated for the first time into English, the work is accompanied by an exclusive interview with Badiou in which he elaborates on the connections between his early and most recent work-for which the concept of model remains seminal.
  •  4
    2. What Is Post-Cantorian Thought? Transfi nitude and the Conditions of Philosophy
    In Sean Bowden & Simon Duffy (eds.), Badiou and Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 19-38. 2012.
  •  4
    Leibniz studies is a distinctive kind of joy. The seventeenth-century polymath made remarkable impacts in a wide-ranging number of domains and their subdomains. The attempt to study one domain in d...