PhD, University of Pittsburgh
About
He specializes in the history of early modern philosophy, especially Thomas Hobbes but also figures such as René Descartes and Margaret Cavendish, and in the history and philosophy of science. Past work has examined topics such as the following: the laws of nature in Leviathan and their connection to geometrical definitions; Margaret Cavendish’s criticisms of Hobbes’s explanation of visual perception; the debate between Hobbes and Robert Boyle concerning experimentation and scientific knowledge; and Hobbes’s objections to Descartes’s Meditations. A complete list of publications is available on his website.
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/marcuspadams
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Motion as an Accident of Matter: Margaret Cavendish and Thomas Hobbes on Motion and Rest, Southern Journal of Philosophy 59.4 (2021): 495-522.
Hobbes’s Laws of Nature in Leviathan as a Synthetic Demonstration: Thought Experiments and Knowing the Causes, Philosophers’ Imprint 19.5 (2019): 1-23.
Visual Perception as Patterning: Cavendish against Hobbes on Sensation, History of Philosophy Quarterly 33 (2016): 193-214.
Hobbes on Natural Philosophy as ‘True Physics’ and Mixed Mathematics, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 56 (2016): 43-51.
The Wax and the Mechanical Mind: Reexamining Hobbes’s Objections to Descartes’s Meditations, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (2014): 403-424