Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy Since 1600
Recent French and German Thought
Science and Technology Studies
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1981.
Dissertation: "Goethe, Newton, and Color: Background and Rationale of an Unrealized Scientific Controversy." Adviser: Stephen Toulmin
Research and coursework at the Institute for the History of the Natural Sciences (Deutsches Museum) and the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Munich, Sept. 1977 to March 1979
M.A., University of Chicago, 1974
B.A., magna cum laude, Harvard University, 1973
Phi 2323 Philosophy of Man
Phi 3311 Philosophy of Being
Phi 3327 Early Modern Philosophy
Phi 3328 Recent Philosophy
Phi 3351 Junior Seminar
Phi 4331 Epistemology
Phi 4335 Philosophy of Language
Phi 5100 Proseminar
Phi 5300 Philosophy of Language
Phi 5309 Foundations of the Human Sciences
Phi 5345 Philosophy of Technology
Phi 6354 Philosophy of Language
Phi 6377 Nature of Tradition
Phi 6377 Selected Texts: Nietzsche
Phi 6377 Rationalism & Empiricism
Phi 7344 Kant and Idealism
Phi 7344 Text Seminar: Descartes
Phi 7344 Text Seminar: Kant
Phi 8345 Philosophical Anthropology
Phi 8380 Philosophy of Imagination
HUSC 2101 Introduction to Human Sciences
HUSC 2301 The World of the 21st Century
HUSC 3311 Arts in Contemporary Culture
HUSC 3312 Civilization of Science and Technology
HUSC 3331 Foundations of the Human Sciences
HUSC 4341 Tradition of Innovation
IPS 8352 Hegel, Nietzsche, Dostoevski
Books:
Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 33. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2013.
Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
Newtons Optical Writings: A Guided Study. Masterworks of Discovery. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Articles:
“Cognitive Pluralism as Obligation? In Kant and Philosophy in a Cosmopolitan Sense,” 5 vols., edited by Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, et al. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Kant Congress 2010. Berlin, Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2013.
“Cartesian Imaginations: The Method and Passions of Imagining." In A Companion to Rationalism, edited by Alan Nelson, 156-176. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
“Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Rationalist Reconceptions of Imagination.” In A Companion to Rationalism, edited by Alan Nelson, 322342. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
“Goethe and the Poetics of Science.” Janus Head 8, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 207-227.
“Phenomenology” and “Mind-Body Problems,” in The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science, edited by John L. Heilbron. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“Prospero and the Times of Reading,” in Uniting the Liberal Arts: Core and Context: Selected Essays for the Fifth Annual Conference of the Association of Core Texts and Courses, edited by Bainard Cowan and Scott Lee. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002, 83-87.
“The Texture of Thought: Why Descartes' Meditationes is Meditational, and Why It Matters,” in Descartes' Natural Philosophy, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, and John Sutton. London: Routledge, 2000, 736-750.