TEACHING                            RESEARCH                             CV (pdf)       

TEACHING

Classes for Fall 2009:

• Phil 101.002: Intro to Philosophy, MWF 11-11:50am (syllabus)

• Phil 457/557: 17th Century Math and Metaphysics, M 4-6:30pm (syllabus)

Members of Phil 101.002 should log in to WebCT for announcements and additional course materials.

Past courses at UNM (syllabi available upon request):

• Phil 101:  Intro to Philosophical Problems    

• Phil 202: Modern Philosophy
• Phil 350/550: Philosophy of Science
• Phil 506: Descartes
• Phil 410/510: Kant

Winner of the 2009 Award for Teaching Excellence from UNM's College of Arts & Sciences (UNM's news release)

Winner of UNM's 2006-2007 Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award (UNM's news release)

RESEARCH

• Major Areas of Interest:

               History of Modern Philosophy, Newtonian Science & the Scientific Revolution, Kant, Philosophy of Science

• Other Areas of Interest: 

               Ancient and Modern Skepticism, Philosophy of Mathematics, Science and Religion

Publications

If you would like a copy of any of the following papers, please email me.

·      "Kant on the Imagination and Geometrical Certainty"

        Forthcoming in Perspectives on Science (2010), Volume 18, Issue 4.

·      "Observation and Mathematics"

        Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (OUP), edited by Peter Anstey.

·      "Locke's Qualified Embrace of Newton's Principia"

        Forthcoming in a volume titled Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays (CUP), edited by Andrew Janiak and Eric Schliesser.

·       "Newton as Historically-Minded Philosopher"

              Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science

              Edited by Mary Domski and Michael Dickson.  Open Court (2010), pp. 65-89.

·      "The Intelligibility of Motion and Construction:  Descartes' Early Mathematics and Metaphysics, 1619-1637"

        Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2009) 40: 119-130.

·       "The Transcendental and the Geometrical: Kant's Argument for the Infinity of Space"

        In Law and Peace in Kant's Philosophy: Proceedings of the Tenth International Kant Congress (2008), Volume 2: 149-160. 

·       "Construction without spatial constraints:  A Reply to Emily Carson"

        Locke Studies: An Annual Journal of Locke Research (2006) 6:85-99.

·      "The Constructible and Intelligible in Newton's Philosophy of Geometry"

       Philosophy of Science (2003), 70 (5): 1114-11124.

Reviews

·       Review of Daniel Garber and Béatrice Longuenesse (eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns (Princeton University Press, 2008)

              Forthcoming in Mind.

·       Review of Andrew Janiak, Newton as Philosopher (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

             Early Science and Medicine (2009) 14: 590-592.

·       Review of Peter S. Rudman, How Mathematics Happened: The First 50,000 Years (Prometheus, 2007)

              Endeavour (2008) 32: 39-41.

Some Current Projects

·        I am co-editing a volume of essays with Michael Dickson of the University of South Carolina.  The title of the collection is Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (Open Court, forthcoming in 2010).  The essays in this collection honor Michael Friedman’s work in the history and philosophy of science.  Several of the contributors presented earlier versions of their papers at a workshop held at the University of South Carolina in October 2004.  For the program and abstracts, click here.

·        I am helping organize the fifth annual meeting of the Southwest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.  The meeting will take place 27 - 28 February 2010 at the University of New Mexico.  For more information on this event, please visit the Seminar web site.

·       I was the PI on a recently completed $100,000 NSF grant that supported the Ethics Fellows Pilot Program.  The main goal of the program was to train graduate students in Philosophy and Engineering to co-teach UNM's undergraduate Engineering Ethics course (ECE/ME/CE 409).  UNM's Office of Graduate Studies has featured my work on this program on their web site.

Some Recent (and Not-so-Recent) Presentations

·      I will be presenting the Keynote Address at the American Society for Aesthetics, Rocky Mountain Division Meeting, which will take place 9-11 July 2010 at the St. Francis Hotel in Santa Fe, NM.  My talk is currently titled "Unity as Natural, Reason as Divine: The Beauty of Systems in Seventeenth Century Natural Philosophy".

·      I will be presenting a paper on Newton's De Gravitatione at the HSS Annual Meeting, which will be held in Phoenix, AZ, 19-22 November 2009.

·      I presented a paper on Locke's reading of Newton's Principia at this summer's SPAWN conference, which was held at Syracuse University 9-11 August 2009.

·      I presented a paper on the relationship between mathematics and metaphysics in Descartes' mature philosophy at Duke University on Friday 3 April 2009. 

·      I presented some of my work on the role of the imagination in Kant's mathematics at a workshop on geometrical thinking sponsored by the Ideals of Proof program (15-16 December 2008, University of Nancy, France). 

·      I presented a paper on the role of the imagination in Kant's mathematics at the Seventh International Congress of the International Society for the History of the Philosophy of Science (HOPOS).  The meeting took place 18-21 June 2008 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. 

·      I presented a paper on Descartes's math and metaphysics at the &HPS1 Conference (11-13 October 2007, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh). 

·       I presented some of my work on Newton at Newton And/As Philosophy (21-25 June 2007, Leiden University, The Netherlands), a wonderful conference that was organized by Eric Schliesser of Leiden University.

For more on my research, you can download my current CV (pdf).