Richard Arthur

Richard T. W. Arthur is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McMaster University whose work focuses on early modern natural philosophy, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and contemporary philosophy of physics. His research is particularly concerned with the concepts of time and the infinite, which he examines through both historical analysis and systematic philosophical investigation. His work centers on the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Arthur retired from McMaster University in 2018.

Research Arthur's research was about early modern natural philosophy, especially seventeenth-century thinkers such as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz. A central theme in his work is the "composition of the continuum," a problem in Leibniz's philosophy often associated with the so-called "labyrinth" of the infinite. His studies examine Leibniz's accounts of substance, motion, and continuity in relation to early modern atomism, mechanism, and Scholastic metaphysics.

Work on Leibniz and early modern philosophy Arthur has produced scholarship on Leibniz, including translations, edited volumes, and monographs. His 2001 work Leibniz: The Labyrinth of the Continuum presents translations of Leibniz manuscripts from his early period, focusing on the development of his views on continuity and substance. In Monads, Composition, and Force: Ariadnean Threads through Leibniz's Labyrinth (2018), Arthur examines the formation of Leibniz's theory of substance in relation to the problem of continuity. His later work Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity (2021) offers a historical analysis of Leibniz's theories of space, time, and motion, while engaging with their implications for modern physics. and McMaster University, he focuses the view that temporal becoming is compatible with modern physics, including relativity and quantum theory.

Additional research areas Arthur has contributed to scholarship on early modern atomism, including the work of Daniel Sennert and Julius Caesar Scaliger, and their influence on later thinkers such as Leibniz. Another area of his research concerns the philosophy of the infinite, where he examines alternatives to Cantorian set theory and develops interpretations of Leibniz's conceptions of infinitesimals and the actual infinite.

Academic activity after retirement He has been engaged with the "Mathesis project" directed by David Rabouin in Paris, involving the edition of manuscripts in collaboration with the Leibniz-Archiv of Hanover, for which he has been a "Foreign Partner Partenaire étranger". He has been an active participant in SPHERE, of which Rabouin is Research Director, which acts as a central hub for young scholars working in the history and philosophy of mathematics.

Books Natural Deduction (2011) The Labyrinth of the Continuum (2001; ppbk ed. 2013) Leibniz (2014) Monads, Composition, and Force (2018) The Reality of Time Flow: Local Becoming in Modern Physics (2019) Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity (2021) Leibniz: Journal Articles on Natural Philosophy (2003; edited volume) An Introduction to Logic: using natural deduction, real arguments, a little history and some humour. (Second edition of Arthur 2011 with revised title and content). Peterborough: Broadview Press. 2017. 连续性的迷宫 (Chinese translation of G. W. Leibniz: The Labyrinth of the Continuum. Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672 to 1686); 2024.