I specialize in early modern natural philosophy and mathematics, as well as contemporary philosophy of physics and mathematics. My main interests are time and the infinite, which I explore in both historical and contemporary contexts. I study the views of many of the founders of modern natural philosophy, such as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Russell and Whitehead, as well as of lesser-known thinkers such as Isaac Beeckman, Daniel Sennert, Gabriel Wagner and Alfred Robb, with an eye to implications for time and the infinite in modern physics and mathematics.

I retired from McMaster University in July 2018, but have been even more active in my research and writing ever since, having published or written eight books in that time (three of them co-authored), as well as many articles. My latest book, Elysian Dialogues on the Infinite: Leibniz, Cantor, and Russell, is shortly to appear with Birkhäuser; just ahead of Russell on Leibniz, co-authored with Nick Griffin, to appear with OUP.  I also recently published a dialogue on Whitehead’s metaphysics of physics, The Vicarage Iconoclast:Whitehead on Leibniz, Relativity and the Quantum with Qeios. It is available at https://doi.org/10.32388/932RTK.4 .

I am active in various online forums, as well as giving talks and presentations. In  October 2025 I presented at the LSNA and at the Sodalitas Leibnitiana, and commented on two papers at the Red de Jóvenes investigadores Leibniz (all three remotely), and also gave papers in person in mid-November at the Quebec-Ontario workshop in Montreal and then at a workshop on intensive magnitudes in Paris, followed by a Round Table discussion of David Rabouin’s and my book. I also collaborated on two articles which have recently been published, one with Filippo Costantini  (in BJHP), and the other with Osvaldo Ottaviani (in the Leibniz Review). I helped my colleague Barry Allen supervise Kathrin Gardhouse at McMaster, who graduated in 2025, only months before Barry’s shocking demise. My last PhD student, Jeffrey Elawani, (whom I  co-supervised with Rabouin in Paris), graduated with PhDs from both McMaster and Paris-CIté in April 2026.

Listen to this podcast! of Professor Sam Levey, Philosophy,  Dartmouth College, NH, interviewing me about my prize-winning book on Leibniz, Monads, Composition, and Force.

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