Here are some things I’ve written, organized by topic.
Please get in touch if you’d like me to send you anything that’s behind a paywall.
Philosophy of Microbiology
2023 Going big by going small: trade-offs in microbiome explanations of cancer (with Anya Plutynski). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 97: 101–110.
2021 Trivial, interesting, or overselling? The microbiome and ‘what it means to be human’. BioScience 71(6): 658–663.
2020 Philosophy of microbiology (with Maureen O’Malley). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
2020 Microbiome causality: further reflections (a response to our commentators) (with Kate Lynch and Maureen O’Malley). Biology & Philosophy 35: 29. Response to commentaries on Lynch et al. 2019.
2019 How causal are microbiomes? A comparison with the Helicobacter pylori explanation of ulcers (with Kate Lynch and Maureen O’Malley). Biology & Philosophy 34: 62. Target Article published along with peer commentaries.
2018 A cautionary note for claims about the microbiome's impact on the "self" (with Brett Calcott and Maureen O’Malley). PLOS Biology 16(9): e2006654.
2018 Microbes, mathematics, and models (with Maureen O’Malley). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 72: 1–10.
astrobiology and origins of life research
2023 Characterizing life: four dimensions and their relevance to origin of life research. In S Smoukov, J Seckbach & R Gordon (Eds.) Conflicting Models for the Origin of Life, pp. 33–51. Wiley-Scrivener. [preprint]
2023 Behaviour and the origin of organisms (with Matthew Egbert, Martin Hanczyc, Inman Harvey, Nathaniel Virgo, Tom Froese, Hiroki Sayama, Alexandra Penn, & Stuart Bartlett). Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 53: 87–112.
2022 Review of Carol Cleland’s The quest for a universal theory of life: searching for life as we don’t know it. Philosophy of Science 89(4): 872-875.
2020 Dimensions of life definitions. In K Smith & C Mariscal (Eds.), Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology, pp. 79–91. Oxford University Press. [preprint]
2013 What could arsenic bacteria teach us about life? Biology & Philosophy 28(2): 205–218.
scientific modelling and experimentation
2020 What is the nature of theories and models in biology? (with Anya Plutynski). In K Kampourakis & T Uller (Eds.), Philosophy of science for biologists, pp. 55–78. Cambridge University Press.
2018 Microbes, mathematics, and models (with Maureen O’Malley). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 72: 1–10.
2014 Experiments, simulations, and epistemic privilege. Philosophy of Science 81(4): 516–536.
various topics in (history and) philosophy of sCIENCE
2024 Against defending science: asking better questions about Indigenous knowledge and science (with Dan Hikuroa). Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.
2019 Striving for clarity about the “Lamarckian” nature of CRISPR-Cas systems (with Sam Woolley, David Kelley, Anthony Poole and Austen Ganley). Biology & Philosophy 34: 11.
2014 Flies from meat and wasps from trees: Reevaluating Francesco Redi's spontaneous generation experiments. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45: 34–42.
Philosophy of Conservation
2019 Predator Free New Zealand: Social, cultural, and ethical challenges (with the BioHeritage Bioethics Panel) . Biological Heritage National Science Challenge Report. 26 pages.
2018 Ethical responsibilities in invasion biology (with James Russell). The Ecological Citizen 2(1): 17–19.
Ethical issues in synthetic biology
2009 Social and ethical checkpoints for bottom-up synthetic biology, or protocells (with Mark Bedau, Uwe Tangen and Brigitte Hantsche-Tangen). Systems and Synthetic Biology 3: 65–75.
2009 The ethics of protocells: Moral and social implications of creating life in the laboratory (co-edited with Mark Bedau). MIT Press.
public philosophy
2022 What is the most important thing a scientist needs? The Conversation, 23 February.
2021 Let’s choose our words more carefully when discussing mātauranga Māori and science (with Dan Hikuroa). The Conversation, 4 August.
You can also find me on Google Scholar and PhilPapers.