Scholarly Interests and Research Projects

This page is dedicated to all those students over the years who have asked me, "So, you mean you only teach classes two days per week? What do you do all the rest of the time?!?"

Never mind the fact that behind all those wonderful classes lie many hours of preparation each week.... The answer to the student question is that I spend my (little remaining) time racking my brain trying to understand some of the most difficult and perplexing problems in science and philosophy, and to put my thoughts onto paper in some semblance of order and coherence. You can check out my curriculum vitae which contains links to some of my publications to see how far (if at all) I have succeeded.

My main scholarly and research interests have been in the history and philosophy of science, with a special interest in philosophical issues in evolutionary biology, and this is where I have devoted the bulk of my efforts in recent years. My curiosity about such issues began as an undergraduate Biology and Philosophy major at the State University of New York at Cortland, and continued through a master's degree in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, where I wrote a doctoral dissertation in the Philosophy Department on some philosophical problems in evolutionary biology. I was also extremely fortunate to be awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, which helped to broaden my perspective on science considerably. I managed to pull much of this work together in a book entitled The Evolution of Darwinism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Look for it at an airport book kiosk near you.

My other main scholarly interest of late has been considering philosophical issues connected with terrorism. I organized a conference on Understanding Terrorism: Philosophical Issues, at Loyola Marymount University, September 11-13, 2003. The conference brought together scholars, both civilian and military, to consider such issues as how "terrorism" and the "war on terrorism" might be conceptualized, moral issues connected with targeted killing and pre-emptive strikes, the status of captured terrorists as criminals or as prisoners of war, and the legitimacy of torture interrogation. A collection of papers from the conference was published as Philosophy 9/11: Thinking about the War on Terrorism (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 2005). Finally, I just completed a book-length philosophical analysis of the conflict in Northern Ireland known as "the Troubles" entitled The Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Morality of Terrorism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). Naturally, I'm hoping to produce a companion screenplay (minus many of the scholarly footnotes) and to secure movie rights. I'm thinking that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be perfect to play Tony Blair. I'm reserving the role of Margaret Thatcher for myself.

So, now you know....