Research
I. Research on Aristotle's philosophy of science.
- Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford University Press, 2005). The book has most recently been reviewed by W. Wians in Aestimatio. Other reviews include: T. Popa for Journal of the History of Philosophy; D. Henry for Ancient Philosophy; A. Falcon for Rhizai; T. Johansen for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews; and T. Lockwood for Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews. 'Aristotele e il disegno intelligente' by Enrico Berti discusses Aristotle on Teleology in the Italian newspaper Il Sole-24 Ore (PDF).
II. Research on lost works of Aristotle and lost works influential on Aristotle.
- Aristotle's Protrepticus : Edition, translation, and commentary. This collaborative project (with D. S. Hutchinson of the University of Toronto) aims to supply the entire evidence base for this lost work of Aristotle. To this end we have already published 'Authenticating Aristotle's Protrepticus' (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2005). The link will take you to the latest version of the reconstruction, as well as some other resources. John Allemang featured our research in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail (HTML).
- 'Sources for the Philosophy of Archytas' (Ancient Philosophy, 2008) is an extended review essay of the recent edition, translation, and commentary of the fragments of Archytas by Carl Huffman. I praise Huffman's work, but argue that he is wrong to insist that the fragments of the works On Law and On Wisdom are spurious. In the essay I provide an English translation of all the known surviving fragments of those works and argue that their apparent similarity is due to the influence of Archytas on Aristotle, not Aristotle on Pseudo-Archytas.
III. Research on the philosophy of atomism.
- ‘Was Gassendi an Epicurean?’ (History of Philosophy Quarterly 20 (2003): 339-360) discusses some major differences between Epicurean atomism and the early modern atomism of Pierre Gassendi.
- I wrote the entry on 'Atomismus' for the German Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2005).
- With Catherine Wilson I wrote 'Lucretius and the History of Science' (The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. P. Hardie and S. Gilespie, 2007), which discusses the massive influence of Lucretius on the development of modern science.
- 'Spontaneity, Democritean Causality and Freedom' (forthcoming in Elenchos) addresses a charge leveled at atomism as a systematic philosophy very early on: that its physics of causal necessitation destroys the possibility of human freedom and ethical responsibility.
Teaching
I. Graduate Seminars
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Seminar on Epicureanism (2008, with Don Rutherford)
II. Undergraduate Courses
You can find links to the home pages for my current courses below, as well as links to minutes of the lectures taken by undergraduate student "scribes".