Jennifer Mensch

Asst. Prof of STS and Philosophy
[homepage] [email]
201C Old Botany
vox 814.278.7798 • fax 814.865-3057

"My work in 17th- and 18th-century Modern Philosophy has focused on the intersection between philosophy and science, particularly on those moments pivotal in the foundations of contemporary science, since I take the basic philosophical problems of metaphysics and epistemology to be intimately connected with just those foundations. This understanding has a significant effect on both the kinds of courses I teach—I include discussions of Copernicus, Galileo, Huygens, and Newton in any more typical list of modern philosophers, for example—and the research I am doing. My research in this area currently falls under the constellation of philosophical, scientific, and technological problems surrounding vision: accounts of eye and mind, colour theory, blindness and restored-sight studies, and the technological developments in optics from the telescope to colour photography. My philosophical interest throughout concerns the guiding force had by metaphor when it comes to discussions of nature."

Selected Publications

• “‘The Key to All Metaphysics’: Kant’s Letter to Herz, 1772” Kantian Review Vol. 12/3, Fall 2007.
• Review of Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays by Paul Guyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu, Summer, 2006.
• “ Kant and the Problem of Idealism: On the Significance of the Göttingen Review,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2006.
• “ Between Sense and Thought: Synthesis in Kant’s Deductions,” Epoche. A Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 2005.
• “ Kant on Truth,” Idealistic Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Fall 2004..

CV

For a full CV in PDF format, click here.