Education
- BA (British Columbia)
- MA (Toronto)
- PhD (Columbia)
Biography
My research is in the intellectual history of early-modern Europe, with a special focus on the emergence of modern natural science (the "Scientific Revolution"). My main theoretical grounding is in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), but I have also been very influenced by some strains of Anglo-American linguistic philosophy (Quine, Davidson, Searle), and I have engaged critically with the history, theory and philosophy of information (from Shannon to Floridi) and technology (Heidegger, Borgmann, others). My next project is a critical engagement with the natural philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon, arguing it to be epiphenomenal on his power politics (rather than the other way around).
BOOKS
Timothie Bright and the Origins of Early Modern Shorthand: Melancholy, Medicines, and the Information of the Soul. Routledge, 2024.
The Mirror of Information in Early Modern England: John Wilkins and the Universal Character. Palgrave, 2017.
The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700. Ashgate, 2011. (Ed. and intro.)
Milton's Secrecy and Philosophical Hermeneutics. Ashgate, 2008.
Selected Articles
“‘At the End of the Days’: Francis Bacon, Daniel 12:4, and the possibility of science.” Cahiers François Viète 3.7 (2019): 25-44.
“What Lies Beneath: Early modern discovery and The Invention of Science.” Metascience 26.3 (2017): 409-416.
“Introduction” to Fleming (ed.), Papers from Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World. Intellectual History Review (IHR) 24.1: 2014, 1-3.
“The Undiscoverable Country: Occult qualities, scholasticism, and the end of nescience.” In Fleming (ed.), The Invention of Discovery (above), 61-78.
“Making Sense of Science and the Literal: Modern semantics, early modern hermeneutics,” in Kevin Killeen and Peter Forshaw (eds), The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science (Palgrave, 2007), 45-60.
“Composing 1629,” in Charles W. Durham and Kristin A. Pruitt (eds), Milton’s Legacy (Susquehanna UP, 2005), 149-164.
“Prevent is not prevent: Rape and rhetoric in The Tempest.” Exemplaria 15 (2003): 449-470.
“Meanwhile, Medusa in Paradise Lost.” ELH 69.4 (2002): 1009-1028.
Courses
Future courses may be subject to change.