About

My research lies at the intersection between philosophy of science, metaphysics, and value theory. Despite the breadth of these topics, I am pressed with one main question: how are we to make sense of regular natural phenomena in a contingent, exceedingly complex world? When nature seems like a blooming, buzzing confusion, what accounts for the remarkable sameness of biological processes like protein synthesis, synaptic transmission, and natural selection? Laws of nature, natural necessity, mechanisms, and probability play major roles in our scientific explanations of observable regularities. But, when faced with the inevitable underdetermination of explanation by the evidence, so do extra-theoretic values like simplicity, unification, fecundity, and explanatory power. I am fascinated by trying to understand these roles.

Topics I have recently written about include: methods for determining causal directionality from statistical noise, scientific explanation as both causal and modal, mechanisms in evolutionary biology, and an extended evolutionary account of biological individuality.