Department of Philosophy

Leibniz, Time, and History. Edited. Special issue of Studia Leibnitiana.  Forthcoming in 2012.

Logic and Knowledge. Co-edited with Carlo Cellucci and Emiliano Ippoliti. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.

Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2007.

“Leibniz, Locke and Cassirer: Abstraction and Analysis,” Leibniz and Analysis, Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft, H. Breger and Wen Chao Li, eds., forthcoming.

“Combining Referential and Analytic Modes of Representation in the Study of Large Astronomical Objects,” in The Historicity of Knowledge and Things: Theoretical Perspectives at the Crossroads of History, Epistemology, and Ontology,  New Directions in Philosophy of Science Series, Palgrave-Macmillan, K. Vermeir and U. Klein, eds. with Epilogue by H.-J. Rheinberger, forthcoming.

“Studying Populations without Molecular Biology: Aster Models and a New Argument Against Reductionism,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2011), pp. 246-51.

 “Leibniz’s Mathematical and Philosophical Analysis of Time,” in Imagination, Infinity, and Continuity: Interrelations of Philosophy and Mathematics in Leibniz, D. Rabouin and N. Goethe, eds., Archimedes Series, New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Springer Verlag, forthcoming.

“Logic, Mathematics, Heterogeneity,” with a discussion by Valeria Giardino, Logic and Knowledge, E. Grosholz, C. Cellucci and E. Ippoliti, eds., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp. 305-319.

“The Representation of Time in Galileo, Newton and Leibniz: Reference and Analysis,” 2010 Lovejoy Lecture, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 333-350.

“Philosophy of History and Philosophy of Mathematics,” Special issue on philosophy of mathematics,  ed. C. Cellucci, Paradigmi, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2011).

“Space and Time,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, Desmond Clarke and Catherine Wilson, eds., Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 51-70.

“Locke et Leibniz: Forme et expérience,” (tr. Gaetan Pegny), in Locke et Leibniz: Deux styles de rationalité,  M. de Gaudemar and P. Hamou, eds., Europaea Memoria Series, Series I, Vol. 84, Georg Olms, 2010, pp. 93-108.

 “Aristotle, Shakespeare, and the Problem of Character,” Special Issue on Philosophy and Poetry, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XXXIII (2009), E. Lepore, P. A. French, and H. Wettstein, eds., pp. 198-208.

“Leibniz on Mathematics and Representation: Knowledge through the Integration of Irreducible Diversity,” The Philosophy of the Young Leibniz, M. Kulstad, M. Laerke, and D. Snyder, eds., Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 35, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009, pp. 95-110.

 “Simone de Beauvoir and Practical Deliberation,” PMLA, Vol. 124, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 199-205.

Reference and Analysis: Cosmos, Number, Organism. Productive scientific and mathematical discourse must carry out two distinct tasks: an analysis or search for conditions of intelligibility (things) and solvability (problems); and a strategy for achieving successful reference, the clear and public indication of what we are talking about. More abstract discourses that promote analysis, and more concrete discourses that enable reference are typically not the same, and the resultant composite text characteristic of successful scientific research will be heterogeneous and multivalent, a fact that has been missed by philosophers who begin from the point of view of logic, where rationality is often equated with strict discursive homogeneity.  My arguments are supported by case studies from the early modern period and from the late twentieth century, since I think that historical resemblances and differences makes my philosophical insights clearer. They include seventeenth century mechanics and modern cosmology; the work of Descartes and Leibniz, and of Kurt Gödel and Andrew Wiles on number; and Goethe’s botanical writings and contemporary population genetics.

Scientia Mathematica Generalis:  G. W. Leibniz. Editions and French and English translations of a collection of texts. With David Rabouin, Director, REHSEIS, who is the primary author for this project.