Alison Peterman is an associate professor at the University of Rochester, specializing in early modern philosophy and the philosophy of science. She completed her Phd in philosophy at Northwestern University, and an MS in physics at the University of Maryland. Professor Peterman has published groundbreaking work on Spinoza’s physics and his conception of extension, and on Margaret Cavendish’s materialist account of the physical world, focusing especially on the nature of motion and mereology.