Talk Title: Reconstructing the Past

As an undergraduate at Yale I was drawn to physics, which I found strikingly creative and counterintuitive. I encountered philosophy for the first time as part of an intensive humanities program, and then pursued both as a combined major. Thinking about these topics was exciting and rewarding enough that I decided to go on to graduate study, at Pittsburgh’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science. A colleague in graduate school once described Pitt’s department as neither “big H” (emphasis on history) nor “big P” (emphasis on philosophy), but instead “big S” (emphasis on science). Like most of my peers in graduate school, I developed the skills to do “big S”-style work by continuing to study physics. My dissertation is a historical and philosophical study of the development of early universe cosmology. This has continued to be a major focus of my research, but I also have worked on topics ranging from Newton’s work to foundational questions in general relativity. The common thread tying together all of this work is an interest in both what specific physical theories say about the world, and how we should justify and evaluate these theories.  After finishing my dissertation, I held a postdoc at the Dibner Institute (MIT) for one year. I was then an assistant professor of philosophy for four years at UCLA before accepting a position at Western in 2007.  I am now a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, and served as several years as the Director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy.