I specialize in early modern natural philosophy and mathematics. My main interests are time and the infinite, which I explore in both historical and contemporary contexts. I study the views of many of the founders of modern natural philosophy, such as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Russell and Whitehead, as well as of subsidiary figures such as Isaac Beeckman, Daniel Sennert, Gabriel Wagner and Alfred Robb, with an eye to implications for time and the infinite in modern physics and mathematics.

I retired from McMaster University in July 2018, but have been even more active in my research and writing ever since, having published or written eight books in that time, as well as many articles. Three of these books are co-authored: Leibniz on the Foundations of the Differential Calculus (Birkhäuser, May 2025), with David Rabouin from the Université de Paris), Leibniz on the Metaphysics of the Infinite, (Oxford University Press, September 2025) with Osvaldo Ottaviani from Raboud University in the Netherlands, and Russell on Leibniz, with Nick Griffin from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The first demonstrates how Leibniz understood his own calculus, and includes many previously unpublished or untranslated texts by him, as does the second, a collection of “previously unreleased hits” by Leibniz on the infinite, while the third, a complete reassessment of Russell’s interpretation of Leibniz, is currently being revised according to suggestions by the readers for Oxford University Press. I have finished a complete draft of a new book, Elysian Dialogues on the Infinite, which is under consideration at Birkhäuser. A fifth recent book came out in 2003, Leibniz:Journal Articles on Natural Philosophy (OUP), which I edited, and did about half the translations and an introduction. I also recently published a dialogue on Whitehead’s metaphysics of physics, The Vicarage Iconoclast:Whitehead on Leibniz, Relativity and the Quantum with Qeios. It is available at https://doi.org/10.32388/932RTK.4 .

I am active in various online forums, as well as giving talks and presentations. In  October I presented at the LSNA and at the Sodalitas Leibnitiana, and commented on two papers at the Red de Jóvenes investigadores Leibniz (all three remotely), and will give papers in person in mid-November at the Quebec-Ontario workshop in Montreal and then at a workshop on intensive magnitudes in Paris, followed by a Round Table discussion of David Rabouin’s and my book. I am co-supervising a PhD student, Jeffrey Elawani, (with Rabouin in Paris), and helped supervise another (Kathrin Gardhouse at McMaster) who graduated last year. I have also collaborated on two articles which have recently been published, one with Filippo Costantini  (in BJHP), and the other with Osvaldo Ottaviani (in the Leibniz Review).

Listen to this podcast! of Professor Sam Levey, Philosophy,  Dartmouth College, NH, interviewing me about my prize-winning book on Leibniz, Monads, Composition, and Force.

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