My Research
Thought Experiments and Scientific Representation
I defend a pragmatic account of scientific representation in which representations are tools that offer affordances to scientists that allow them to interact with the world and think through problems in more effective ways. However, a conception of representation like this one in which how closely a representation ‘mirrors’ or ‘resembles’ the world is largely irrelevant, needs a different explanation than improved mirroring for how and why representations change. I argue that thought experiments are one of the major vehicles of representational change. They are the test-beds of representation. Thought experiments work by assessing the pragmatic virtues of representational schemes and testing whether different representations are compatible with each other.
A manuscript in which I defend my account of thought experiment against challengers is currently under review. If you would like to see a copy, please contact me.
Alchemy and Early Modern Matter Theory
I study the connections between theories about the possibility of alchemy and beliefs about metals, matter, and materials, especially in the works of Robert Boyle, his influences, and his contemporaries.
Mathematics, Conceptual Change, and Open Texture
My recent work has focused on mathematical (and, by extension, scientific) conceptual change, especially through what I call the ‘Waismannian Mechanism’ - incremental changes in a concept’s extension and intension that result from the closing of a concept’s open texture.
In a recent paper, I argued that this form of conceptual change in mathematics could foil the efforts of Active SETI projects that use the Drake Pictures messaging scheme.
In my current work, I develop this notion into a broader picture of conceptual engineering - one fit for the sciences. You can find my short paper on this topic in the proceedings of the Annual Wittgenstein Symposium 2025 here.