The early moderns surely didn’t have an embodied, extended, embedded or enacted conception of the mind, but I aim to show that this perspective can make sense of some of their practices: in particular, how experimental philosophers approached their experiments. Focusing on Newton’s optical experiments, I’ll argue that some aspects of early modern scientific practice turn crucially on how the experimenter is situated towards gaining particular kinds of know-how. My account provides one answer to a long-standing puzzle regarding Newton’s method: namely, his appeal to ‘compelled assent’ as an epistemic standard.

Dr Kirsten Walsh is a Philosophy Lecturer in the Department of Social and Political Studies, Philosophy and Anthropology (SPSPA) at the University of Exeter. Dr Walsh completed her PhD at the University of Otago in New Zealand, focusing on the scientific methodology of Isaac Newton. After finishing her degree, went on to a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bucharest and a Lecturer at the University of Calgary, and Dr Walsh spent two years as an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Nottingham before moving to Exeter.

Dr Walsh is interested in Isaac Newton’s methodology in both historical and philosophical contexts. Dr Walsh asks, how ought we understand his scientific achievements and what are the upshots for theoretical accounts of science? Her approach incorporates the tools and ideas of contemporary philosophy of science, balanced with a sensitivity to historical context. This gives her research a distinctive reach into both contemporary issues in the philosophy of science and to the history of ideas.

STS Research Seminar: Kirsten Walsh, Philosophy Lecturer