He received his PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University, UK. His current research focuses on science and technology in the modern world, and the ways in which they have absorbed and informed the concepts, values, and equipment of politics, philosophy, religion and the arts. His first book, The Romantic Machine (University of Chicago 2012), examined the entwinement of romanticism and industrialization in France during the years before the revolution of 1848. His current projects deal with the neuroscience of meditation, cosmograms of modernity, and Edgar Allan Poe’s science.