about me:
I am a philosopher specializing in early modern natural philosophy and mathematics. My main interests are time and the infinite, which I study in both historical and contemporary contexts. I explore the views of many of the founders of modern natural philosophy, such as Descartes, Newton, Einstein and Leibniz, as well as of subsidiary figures such as Beeckman and Robb, with an eye to implications for time and the infinite in modern physics and mathematics.
I am very active in my writing and research collaborations, despite having retired in 2018. Based in Toronto, I am in the copy-editing process with two co-authored books:Leibniz on the Foundations of the Differential Calculus, with David Rabouin from the Université de Paris, and Leibniz on the Metaphysics of the Infinite, with Osvaldo Ottaviani from Raboud, while a third, Russell on Leibniz, with Nick Griffin from McMaster, is under review with Oxford University Press. I have also just finished a complete manuscript of a new book, Elysian Dialogues on the Infinite. Last year I published Leibniz:Journal Articles on Natural Philosophy (OUP, 2023), for which I did about half the translations and wrote an introduction.
I am also active in various online forums, as well as giving talks and presentations (in Paris and Milan in March, and Hanover in August 2023, and in Paris in June 2024). I was invited as Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Bristol for September and October 2023, where I gave a series of seminars and two lectures. View blog post! I am co-supervising a PhD student, Jeffrey Elawani, (with David Rabouin in Paris, where Jeff is completing his studies), helping supervise another (Kathrin Gardhouse at McMaster), and am also collaborating on two articles, one with Filippo Costantini, now in Paris, and the other with Osvaldo Ottaviani, now in the Netherlands..
Listen to this podcast! of Prof. Sam Levey, Philosophy, Dartmouth College, NH, interviewing me about my prize-winning book on Leibniz, Monads, Composition, and Force.
See Research Interests for more. See also latest news.
Books by RTWA
Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity
December 16, 2021
Monads, Composition, and Force
Nov. 14 2018
An Introduction to Logic
Nov. 30 2016
Leibniz
Sept. 9 2014
The Labyrinth of the Continuum
Sept. 3 2013 (pbk), 2001 (hdbk)
Natural Deduction
May 25th, 2011