Publications

 

“Legitimating the Machine: The Epistemological Foundations of Technological Metaphor in the Natural Philosophy of René Descartes” Philosophies of Technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries. Edited by Claus Zittel. Volume 11: Intersections - Yearbook for Early Modern Studies (Brill: Leiden and Boston). Forthcoming.

 

“How the Brain Became the Headquarters of the Self” Review of The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History, by Robert L. Martensen (Oxford University Press, 2004). In Metascience (Vol 15, #3, December 2006). Springer, Netherlands.

 

 

In Preparation

“Descartes and the Phenomenology of Baroque Illusion: Mechanical Spectacle and the Cartesian Theory of Life”

 

“Socrates in the Workshop: Knowing and Making in Plato’s Philosophy of Technology”

 

“Becoming Machine? On Some Possible Applications of Deleuzian Ontology to the Philosophy of Technology”

 

 

Other Excerpts

 

“Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy of Technology”

 

“2001 and the Imagined History of Technology”

 

“Machine Metaphysics: Descartes, the Mechanization of Life, and the Dawn of the Posthuman” (PhD Thesis)

     * Excerpt from Introduction

     * Excerpt from Chapter 2

 

“Ghosts in the Mechanosphere: The Metaphor of the Machine in Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia”

 

 

Conference Presentations

 

“Descartes’ Optics and the Early Modern Posthuman.” Australasian Postgraduate

Philosophy Conference (September-October, 2004). Macquarie University,

Sydney.

 

“The Body Made Machine: On the History and Applications of a Metaphor.”

The Flesh Made Text: Bodies, Theories, Cultures in the Post-Millennial Era

(May 2003). School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

 

“Singing the Body Machine: The Mechanization of Life in the Seventeenth

Century.” Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves (April 2003).

Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

 

“What is Technology?” Ute Culture: The Utility of Culture (December, 2002).

Annual National Conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australia,

University of Melbourne, Australia.

 

 

 

Research Areas

 

Posthumanism. Metaphysical, cultural and ethical issues arising from the melding of organism and machine, life and technology.

 

Philosophy and history of technology. Discourses and myths surrounding technology. Cultural, social and phenomenological aspects of technology. The history of the notion of ‘technology’.

 

The rise of the scientific world-view in the early modern period (in particular, the life sciences). The modelling of scientific knowledge on the ideal of technological practice, and the use of technological metaphors in the conceptualisation of nature.

 

Millenarianism: The utopian and apocalyptic imagination. Mythologies of the Information Age. Postmodern and New Age ‘cargo cults’ of technology (Extropianism, Business-Friendly Technological Determinism etc.)

 

Writing and the image: Visual culture, creative writing. Writing as technology. The writing and editing process. Textual analysis. History of writing systems.