Dr TzuChien Tho
Current positions
Senior Lecturer
Department of Philosophy
Contact
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Biography
Tzuchien Tho defended a Ph.D. dissertation (University of Georgia, USA) on the mathematical and metaphysical aspects of Leibniz’s infinitesimal calculus in 2011.
Previously, he has been affiliated with the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (NL), the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (Rue D’Ulm), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the Institute for Research in the Humanities (University of Bucharest) and the University of Milan. Since late 2017, he has held the position of lecturer in history of philosophy and science at the University of Bristol.
He has previously published on mathematical and physical aspects of Leibniz’s philosophy. His current work surrounds the mathematical, methodological and metaphysical problems surrounding physical causality in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Publications
Selected publications
31/12/2025Mos Geometricus and the Genetic Infinite
The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy
Via Subtractiva
Crisis and Critique
Leibnizian Conservation in d'Alembert's Traité de dynamique
Leibniz’s Legacy and Impact
Recent publications
25/03/2026Living Forces and Stationary Action: Leibniz at the Limits of Analytic Mechanics
Foundations of Science
Mos Geometricus and the Genetic Infinite
The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy
Via Subtractiva
Crisis and Critique
G. W. Leibniz: Publications on Natural Philosophy
Mechanical Philosophy: Reductionism and Foundationalism
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences
Teaching
Pre-pandemic, I taught Introduction to Philosophy A (with J. Ladyman), Texts in Modern European Philosophy (on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with Martin Sticker) and the MA seminar History of Science. I also teach Classical Chinese Philosophy and a history and philosophy of physics unit called Space, Time, and Matter.
Post-pandemic, things have shifted a bit.
In past years, I also taught Texts in Early Modern Philosophy: Empiricism and Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.