Deborah Brown

Research Interests: Early Modern Philosophy and Logic and the Philosophy of Science

Early Modern Philosophy covers the period of philosophical thought roughly from 1650-1800, and encompasses radical changes in philosophical and scientific thinking and their intersection. Research interests include early modern and medieval theories of mind, action, metaphysics and epistemology, as well as social and political thought. Key figures of the early modern period include Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche, Hume and the Cambridge Platonists and of the later medieval period, Aquinas, Ockham, Scotus, Buridan and Suárez.

Logic and the Philosophy of Science examines fundamental issues in formal and informal reasoning, the nature of scientific reasoning, and other issues concerned with scientific method, scientific knowledge, the rise of modern science, the nature of scientific entities and metaphysical concepts that underlie science. Research interests include the emergence of the notion of force and theories of inertia, causation, emergent properties, functions and mereology.