“We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe” – Rene Descartes. 

I am a designer turned historian and philosopher of science, focusing on foundational concepts in science, specifically in the interplay between physics, mathematics, philosophy and visual design. My research centers on how preexisting concepts frame, or even limit, our thinking and how introducing new ones may expand our understanding of nature. I completed my HPS master’s thesis titled “In-form-ation: The Molding of Scientific Knowledge” at Utrecht University in 2022 under the supervision of Marcel Boumans and Paul Ziche. My thesis explored the formation of qualitative concepts in science, visualization and observation by analyzing the writings of multidisciplinary scientists (or rather I like to refer to them ‘natural philosophers’) such as Johannes Kepler and Rene Thom.

 

Now, I am one of Guido Bacciagaluppi’s PhD students in the ERC Advanced Grant project BOHR21: Niels Bohr for the 21st Century. This this project I continue my research into qualitative concepts and epistemology in Bohr’s work, by examining complementarity as a mode of description and epistemological concept (rather than theoretical interpretation). With the co-supervision of Abigail Nieves Delgado, my work also explores the connection between Bohr’s complementarity and biology, specifically through light, in the first half of the 20^th century. Beyond my research, I’m an editor for the history of science blog Shells and pebbles, I worked as managing editor for the peer-reviewed journal Technology and Culture at Johns Hopkins University Press, as the publishing manager at Tilburg University Open Press, and as designer in The Journal of Trial and Error.