Early Modern Philosophy
Papers cited as [bold.pdf] may be found at https://macdrive.mcmaster.ca/published/early-modern-philosophy/, the others as indicated:
“Monads and Points, Contiguity and Transcreation: on the Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of the Continuum,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, August 2025, https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2024-0179.
Foreword for the new edition of Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy of Leibniz, Routledge, 2025, ix-xviii. [FOREWORD – Philosophy of Leibniz.pdf]
“Leibniz’s ‘Deriving the Laws of Motion from Abstract Principles’: Commentary, Text, and Translation,” with Osvaldo Ottaviani, The Leibniz Review, Vol. 34, 2024, 123-138. [Deriving the Laws of Motion.pdf]
“Leibniz’s Principle of Equipollence and the Origins of his Dynamics”, Vorträge des XI. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses, 2023, ed. Wenchao Li, Charlotte Wahl, Sven Erdner, Bianca Carina Schwarze and Yue Dan, Band 1, 27-38. [Leibniz’s Principle of Equipollence.pdf]
“Leibniz’s metaphysics of change: vague states & physical continuity”, pp. 299-322 in Thinking and Calculating. Essays on Logic, its History and its Philosophical Applications, in Honour of Massimo Mugnai, ed. Francesco Ademollo, Fabrizio Amerini, and Vincenzo De Risi, 2022. [Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Change: Vague States and Physical Continuity.pdf]
“Leibniz’s Ad schedam Hamaxariam: Introduction, Text and Translation”, co-authored with Osvaldo Ottaviani, pp. 61-106, Leibniz Review, 31, 2021. [Ad schedam Hamaxariam.pdf]
“Leibniz as a Precursor to Chaitin’s Algorithmic Information Theory”, chapter 9 (153-176) in Information and the History of Philosophy, ed. Chris Meyns, London: Routledge, 2021. [IHP-ch9_arthur.pdf]
« États vagues, changements discontinus, et le principe de continuité chez Leibniz », pp. 44-57 in Leibniz et leibnizianismes, ed. Jan Makovský, Prague: Filosofický časopis (Hors-série), 2019. [offprint]
“Mario Bunge on causality: some key insights and their Leibnizian precedents”, chapter 11 (pp. 185-204) in Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift, ed. Michael R. Matthews, Springer Verlag, 2019. [M.Bunge.on.Causality.pdf]
“On the Non-Idealist Leibniz: A Reply to Sam Levey,” pp. 97–101 in Leibniz Review, 28, 2018. [83-101 Levey-Arthur review proof-rtwa.pdf]
“The Hegelian Roots of Russell’s Critique of Leibniz”, pp. 9-42 in Leibniz Review, 28, 2018. [leibniz_2018_Hegelian Roots.pdf]
“Leibniz’s Syncategorematic Actual Infinite”, pp. 155-179 in Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy, eds. Ohad Nachtomy and Reed Winegar, Springer Verlag, 2018. [offprint]
“Russell’s Leibniz Notebook”, co-edited with Nicholas Griffin, pp. 5-56 in Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 37, 1, 2017.
“Marginalia in Russell’s Copy of Gerhardt’s edition of Leibniz’s Philosophischen Schriften”, co-edited with Nicholas Griffin and Jolen Galaugher, pp. 57-142 in Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 37, 1, 2017.
“Moore’s Notes on Russell’s Leibniz Lectures”, co-edited with Nicholas Griffin, pp. 143-192 in Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, 37, 1, 2017.
“Thought Experiments in Newton and Leibniz”, 111-127 in The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments, ed. James Robert Brown, Yiftach Fehige, and Michael T. Stuart. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
“Leibniz, Organic Matter and Astrobiology”, pp. 87-107 in Tercentenary Essays on the Philosophy and Science of G. W. Leibniz, ed. Lloyd Strickland, Erik Vynckier and Julia Weckend. Routledge, 2016. [offprint]
“Leibniz’s Causal Theory of Time Revisited”, Leibniz Review, 26, 2016, 151-178. [offprint]
“On the Mathematization of Free Fall: Galileo, Descartes and a History of Misconstrual”, 81-111 in The Language of Nature, volume 20 of Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, ed. Geoffrey Gorham, Benjamin Hill, Edward Slowik and C. Kenneth Waters, 2016.
“Atom”, 35-38 in the Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Lawrence Nolan, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
“Time”, 717-721 in the Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Lawrence Nolan, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Reply to Ohad Nachtomy’s review of my Leibniz (Polity Press, 2014), Leibniz Review, 24, 2014, (review pp. 123-130, reply pp. 131-133: [preprint]
Review of Klaas van Berkel, Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion: Mechanical Philosophy in the Making, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, for HOPOS Spring 2014 issue (vol. 4, number 1). [preprint (extended version)]
“Newton and Leibniz on the Relativity of Motion”, Oxford Handbook of Newton, ed. Chris Smeenk and Eric Schliesser, published online June 2015. [preprint]
“Leibniz’s Actual Infinite in Relation to his Analysis of Matter”, 137-156 (chapter 7) in G. W. Leibniz: Interrelations Between Mathematics and Philosophy, (Springer: Archimedes Series), ed. Norma Goethe, Philip Beeley and David Rabouin, 2015.
“The relativity of motion as a motivation for Leibnizian substantial forms”, for Leibniz’s metaphysics and adoption of substantial forms, ed. Adrian Niță, Springer Verlag, 2015 [preprint].
“Atoms”, for the Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry Nolan (Cambridge University Press, 2014). [preprint]
“Time”, for the Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. Larry Nolan (Cambridge University Press, 2014). [preprint]
“Leibniz’s Theory of Space”, Foundations of Science, ed. Karin Verelst and Maarten Van Dyck, pp. 499-528, 2013. [preprint]
“Leibniz’s Mechanical Principles (c. 1676): Commentary and Translation”, Leibniz Review, 23, 2013, 101-116 [preprint (comm) preprint (trans)].
“Massimo Mugnai and the Study of Leibniz”, Leibniz Review, 23, 2013, 1-5. [preprint]
“The Labyrinth of the Continuum”, in Maria Rosa Antognazza (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Leibniz; published online at (www.oxfordhandbooks.com), Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2013. [preprint]
“Time Atomism and Ash’arite Origins for Cartesian Occasionalism, Revisited” forthcoming in Asia, Europe and the Emergence of Modern Science: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries, ed. Arun Bala, Palgrave McMillan, 2012. [preprint]
“Beeckman’s Discrete Moments and Descartes’ Disdain”, Intellectual History Review (Special Issue on Absolute Space and Time, ed. Ed Slowik and Geoffrey Gorham), Dec. 2011, 22, 1, pp. 69-90. [abstract] [preprint]
“Presupposition, Aggregation, and Leibniz’s Argument for a Plurality of Substances”, Leibniz Review, 21, 91-116, 2011. [preprint]
“Actual Infinitesimals in Leibniz’s Early Thought”, in The Philosophy of the Young Leibniz, Studia Leibnitiana Sonderhefte 35, ed. Mark Kulstad, Mogens Laerke and David Snyder, 2009, pp. 11-28. [preprint of earlier draft] This is a truncated version of a longer paper originally submitted in 2005, “From Actuals to Fictions: Four Phases in Leibniz’s Early Thought on Infinitesimals”, [preprint], which includes a fourth section, “Infinitesimals as Fictions”, not included in the published paper; please do not cite or quote without permission.
“Beeckman, Descartes and the force of motion”, Journal for the History of Philosophy, 45, 1, January, 2007; 1-28. [preprint]
“Leibniz’s Body Realism: Two Interpretations” –with Peter Loptson, The Leibniz Review, 16, 1-42, December 2006. [preprint]
“Animal Generation and Substance in Sennert and Leibniz”, 304-359 in The Problem of Animal Generation in Modern Philosophy, ed. Justin Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [preprint] [published chapter]
“The Enigma of Leibniz’s Atomism”, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume 1, 2003, 183-227. [abstract] [preprint]
“Animal Generation and Substance in Sennert and Leibniz”, in The Problem of Animal Generation in Modern Philosophy, ed. Justin Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
“Leibniz and the Zenonists: a reply to Paolo Rossi”, This is an English translation of my first Italian publication: “Lo zenonismo come fonte delle monadi di Leibniz: una risposta a Paolo Rossi”, a reply to Professor Rossi on the role of the Zenonists in the genesis of Leibniz’s thought, Rivista di storia della filosofia (n. 2, 2003, 335-340). Rossi gave a rejoinder in the same issue (341-349). [preprint]
“Infinite Aggregates and Phenomenal Wholes,” Leibniz Review, 8, 25-45, December 1998.
“Leibniz’s Theory of Time”, pp. 263-313 in The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz, ed. Kathleen Okruhlik and James R. Brown, D. Reidel: Dordrecht, 1985. [preprint]
September 15, 2026