Publications
(2024). with Anik Waldow. The art of thinking as an intersubjective practice: Eloquence, affect, and association in the Port-Royal Logic. European Journal of Philosophy. 1-18. Published Open Access.
In the Port-Royal Logic, Arnauld and Nicole argue that eloquence plays a crucial role in the cultivation of the art of thinking. In this essay, we demonstrate that Arnauld and Nicole's reflections on eloquence exemplify the need to reconceive the larger framework in which Cartesian theories of ideas operate. Instead of understanding epistemic agents as solitary thinkers who pursue their intellectual goals without the influence of others, our analysis shows that for Arnauld and Nicole thinking well was an intersubjective discursive activity that unfolds between complexly organized persons. Central to this activity is the ability to gauge the affective and associative tendencies of interlocutors and to communicate accordingly. This ability is required to enable speakers to deal constructively with problems arising from the context sensitivity of language, the influences of the passions, and the audience's capacity to decipher meaning in the communication of ideas that facilitate understanding and knowledge. By drawing attention to communication, affect, and association in the Port-Royal Logic, we show that there is a significant connection between thinking and expressing oneself well in the early modern period.
(2024). The Mentor and Educator in the Persona of the Scholar. In Charles Wolfe and Anik Waldow (eds), Science and the Shaping of Modernity. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 62. Springer.
The purpose of this chapter is to share remembrances of Stephen Gaukroger as an educator and mentor. To achieve this goal, I will reflect on his contributions to higher education by examining the connections between his teaching at the University of Sydney and his better-known scholarly achievements. The theme of the persona was evergreen in Gaukroger’s scholarship, and in the second part of this chapter, I will examine the impact of this work on scholarship on the English experimental philosophy tradition and early modern mathematics.
(2022). Writing Women into the History of Philosophy: Contextualism Re-Examined. Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists. Published Open Access.
Contextualism is an established approach in the history of philosophy. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of contextualism as it is used in the examination of philosophical works produced by women whose work has, until recent decades, been neglected by historians of philosophy. It examines how various options for practicing contextualist history of philosophy might help to explain a woman’s participation in philosophy or undermine her intellectual authority and obscure our understanding of her work. The paper concludes with three suggestions for writing and teaching work produced by women that are informed by the methodological considerations addressed in the paper in order to avoid some of the epistemically harmful outcomes that can emerge when placing a woman’s work in her patriarchal context.
(2021). Moral improvement through mathematics: Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole’s Nouveaux éléments de géométrie. Synthese, 199, 1727–1749.
This paper examines the ethical and religious dimensions of mathematical practice in the early modern era by offering an interpretation of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole’s Nouveaux éléments de géométrie (1667). According to these important figures of seventeenth-century French philosophy and theology, mathematics could achieve extra-mathematical or non-mathematical goals; that is, mathematics could foster practices of moral self-improvement, deepen the mathematician’s piety and cultivate epistemic virtues. The Nouveaux éléments de géométrie, which I contend offers the most robust account of the virtues cultivated by mathematics in the period, was envisaged by its authors to cultivate moral, Christian and epistemic virtues that could serve in the fulfilment of moral and Christian obligations. In this paper, I set out the goals of mathematical inquiry for the Port-Royalists and describe the specific virtues they believed a revised edition of the Elements of Euclid could foster. I show that Arnauld and Nicole believed that an acquaintance with mathematics could render a student of Euclid more just, truth-loving, attentive and humble, and better able to discern truth from falsity.
This research was discussed by Dr Nicolas Fillion (SFU) in an interview with the Canadian newspaper La Source.
In Press
(in press). The First Rule of Geometers: Arnauld and Nicole’s Theory of Definition. In David Bronstein & Peter Anstey (eds.). Definitions and Essences from Aristotle to Kant. Routledge: London.
The theory of definition presented by Arnauld and Nicole plays an indispensable role in recommendations for thinking well, avoiding error, acquiring knowledge, and guaranteeing demonstrative certainty. Indeed, definition was so central to their project of describing the operations of the mind and reforming epistemic practice that it featured prominently in their discussion of three operations of the mind – conceiving, judging, and ordering – which replaced reasoning as indispensable to thinking well. Not only was definition central to an education in the art of thinking and key to their theory of knowledge, the Port-Royalists saw definition as fundamental to reshaping mathematical practice in their time. In this way, Arnauld and Nicole’s theory of definition had significant practical, epistemological, and mathematical consequences. Despite the importance of this to their philosophical and practical projects, their theory of definition has remained underexplored by scholars of Port-Royal.
(in press). “Besides Common Rules”: Avoiding Error and Regulating the Mind in Arnauld and Nicole’s Logic, or the Art of Thinking. Intellectual History Review.
Though Arnauld and Nicole title their famous pedagogical textbook the Logique, ou l’art de penser, little scholarly attention has been paid to what the Port-Royalists mean by the term ‘art.’ In this paper, I examine Arnauld and Nicole’s definition of the art of thinking and argue that the rare art of thinking consists in skilled practice and understanding. How is an epistemic agent to acquire the understanding and practice necessary to possessing the art of thinking and/or avoid epistemic error? In addition to believing that an individual must regulate the mind through the rules of logic to develop a coherent and reasoned capacity to think, Arnauld and Nicole present insights besides common rules. I conclude the paper by showing examples from the Port-Royal Logic of abilities, traits and dispositions that play a constitutive role in thinking well and reasoning artfully, and are key to recognising the source of our cognitive errors.
Book reviews
(2016). Review of Mathematicians and their Gods: Interactions Between Mathematics and Religious Beliefs by Snezana Lawrence and Mark McCartney. The British Journal for the History of Science 49: 526–527.
(2013). Review of Occasionalism: Causation Among the Cartesians, by Steven Nadler. Intellectual History Review 23: 277–9.
Non-Traditional
(2018). Exhibition. Rare Books and Special Collections. “The Art of Mathematics: Rare Works from the Fisher Collection 1500-1800”, The University of Sydney.
Journalism
Should you avoid disagreements this Christmas or welcome them? The Minefield, 15 December 2022.
Technology permeates our lives - how can we make it more ethical? ABC Religion & Ethics, 8 April 2022.
There is an intellectual value to disagreement, ABC Religion & Ethics, 21 December 2021, revised 2022.
Mathematics and the good life, The Philosopher’s Zone, 12 December 2021.
“Uncouth monsters”: How David Hume helps us understand our need of each other, with Anik Waldow, ABC Religion & Ethics, 4 August 2021