Originally from the Silicon Valley in California, I studied Great Books at St. John's in Annapolis and Physics at UC Santa Cruz. I then returned to a study of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University where I received my Ph. D. in 2002. Shortly before that I was appointed Assistant Professor in the Georgetown University Philosophy Department.

My research is primarily in Philosophy of Science. I spend my efforts there about equally between general issues involving conceptual change in the sciences, the epistemology of science, the nature of scientific theories, and scientific explanation on the one hand, and issues more specific to philosophy of physics on the other including quantum gravity, general relativity, black holes and singularities, gauge theories, thermodynamics, electrodynamics. I also have research interests in early modern philosophy, the foundations of logic and mathematics, and the history of logical empiricism and other movements that attempted to come to grips with the profound conceptual reorientation made necessary by the revolutionary changes in science at the turn of the 20th century.