Research

I am interested in how the natural world became an object of scientific inquiry, how philosophical and mathematical methods came to be the preferred tools to be applied to its study, and what that means for inquiry and understanding. I focus on Aristotle’s scientific theory and his practices as a scientist in answering these questions and am pursuing two closely related projects to do so. My first project examines how Aristotle thinks we justify making certain assumptions our explanatory bedrock (rather than other ones). My second project concerns the question of how Aristotle thinks we can lose trust in specific scientific propositions, methods, and systems without losing trust in science and scientific inquiry itself.