Summer 2016 Course Offering

I have been assistant professor of philosophy at Simon Fraser University since 2013. My research and my teaching focus on the relationship between philosophy, science, and mathematics. In general, my methodological inclination is to tackle the relevant questions from a predominantly epistemological point of view and to make sure to rely on the hard-earned lessons from applied mathematics. You can get a good idea of what my research consists in by having a look at my recent non-technical prize-winning essay on the applicability of mathematics. I regularly teach courses in logic at different levels, critical thinking, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and decision and game theory.

Before joining SFU, I was a postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed at the department of applied mathematics and at the department of statistics and actuarial sciences at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. I have a PhD in Philosophy, under the co-supervision of John L. Bell and Robert W. Batterman (now at U Pittsburgh). During that period, Robert M. Corless and I have published the book A Graduate Introduction to Numerical Method, From the Viewpoint of Backward Error Analysis, which has made the Notable Book 2013 list of the ACM Computing Reviews.

Besides my academic life, I like to train in martial arts. I also try to take some time to enjoy beautiful BC by taking a motorcycle ride or by taking a walk in the mountains or go fishing. I also recently started to do hobby electronics, which is a lot of fun. I am a not too execrable chess player, and I often play at the SFU chess club.

My Erdös number is 4, first obtained in a publication with John Bell and again in publications with Rob Corless. Also, I like to say that according to the Philosophy Family Tree and the Mathematics Genealogy Project, I am the descendent of great people such as I. Schur, G.H. Hardy, G.F. Frobenius, A. Cayley, K. Weierstrass, E. Kummer, F. Bessel, C.F. Gauss, I. Newton, G. Galileo, N. Copernicus, on the side of John Bell. Moreover, I am the descendent of L. Sklar, P. Benacerraf, H. Putnam, H. Reichenbach, E. Noether, K. Jacobi, on the side of Robert Batterman. I find all of this pretty cool!