Year: 2021
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Social Threefolding
“The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is building up the Future. The Times—the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to be studied…
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Zombie Evolution (reply to Sean Carroll)
The physicist Sean Carroll was recently on the Mind Chat podcast hosted by the philosophers Keith Frankish and Philip Goff. Watch it here. I uploaded a brief interpolation of my own on YouTube, which among other things calls out the model-centrism at play in Carroll’s “Core Theory.” Earlier today, Carroll uploaded a blog post to…
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On Whitehead’s Sociological Theory in “Adventures of Ideas”
Whitehead’s goal is these pages to elucidate the concept of civilization. He operates under the assumption that human civilization has profound cosmological significance. The fact that civilized beings have emerged in the course of the evolution of the universe tells us something important about the nature and perhaps even the purpose of that universe. His…
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“Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances” by Catherine Keller
Let us first recall why Keller has chosen to “dreamread” John of Patmos’ Book of Revelation. As a process theologian, it is no surprise that she would be interested in a Biblical text. But her purpose is not merely to read John’s missive back into its 1st century CE historical context. Nor is her intent to…
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“Another End of the World is Possible” by Servigne, Stevens, and Chapelle
“How could we call ‘rational’ an ideal of civilization guilty of a forecasting error so massive that it prevents parents from leaving a habitable world to their children?”—Bruno Latour “The system is collapsing all around us just at the time when most people have lost the ability to imagine that anything else could exist.” —David Graeber…
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“How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times” by Servigne and Stevens
Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens cover a lot of territory in this book. It is clear enough to anyone open to even consider reading it that climate change and other ecological catastrophes are already occurring and will only intensify. This book was published in French in 2015, well before the Covid-19 pandemic. While the origins of this virus…
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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology Podcast
Had a great time chatting with my friend Dr. Sam Mickey about Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.
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Towards a Mycological Metaphysics
The mycologist Merlin Sheldrake recently published Entangled Life (2020). The book revels in the power of fungi to “make us question our categories,” thereby “[changing] the way we think and imagine” (14, 214). A few pages in, Merlin defines mycelium as a process, rather than a thing (6). I am inclined to agree. As a…
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HomeBrewed Christianity podcast with Tripp Fuller
Had a great time discussing Whitehead’s cosmology with Tripp. Check it out here: https://trippfuller.com/2021/09/13/matthew-segall-cosmology-consciousness-and-whiteheads-god/ We discussed topics including: the allure of Whitehead’s vision of mind in nature (knowledge as ‘an adjunct within things known’) the potential of a process engagement with different natural scientific problems, including the origins of life the problems with reductionism what…
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Cassettes podcast
William July invited me on his podcast. We had a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation concerning the hard problem of consciousness, emergence, panpsychism, value, freedom, and so much more. Check it out here.
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Whitehead and the World-Soul on Rune Soup
Had a blast chatting with Gordon White on his podcast Rune Soul
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Hermitix Podcast on Whitehead’s Cosmology
Enjoyed dialoging with James about Whitehead’s organic cosmology
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Psychedelics Today podcast on Consciousness, Capitalism, and Philosophy
I had a great conversation with Joe Moore of Psychedelics Today a couple months back, and the podcast was just released today. Have a listen. In this episode, Joe interviews philosopher, author, and assistant professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco: Matthew D. Segall, Ph.D.…
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Dialoging with John Torday about Cellular Evolution
Dr. Torday is Professor of Evolutionary Medicine at UCLA: https://www.evmed.ucla.edu/torday/ For more on the cellular theory of evolution: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4447538/ More about the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee: https://cobb.institute/science-advisory-committee/
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot (session 1)
Last Saturday, the Science Advisory Committee for the Cobb Institute hosted plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman for the first of 8 dialogue sessions focused on his new book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). The book sketches a new approach to a theory of everything that builds on philosophers like Peirce…
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The Side View: Whitehead and the Physics of the World-Soul
I joined Adam Robbert on The Side View to talk about my new book on Whiteheadian cosmology.
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Whitehead: Purpose and Reason
Originally posted on conceptual prehension: Matthew Segall (who blogs over at footnotes2plato.com) has recently published a revised edition of his book Physics of the World Soul–an exploration of Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, bringing it into dialogue with some recent science and discussing its relevance for our current era of ecological and intellectual turbulence. Reading…
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Dia-logos with John Vervaeke: Emergence, Emanation, and Bernardo Kastrup’s Idealism
Dia-logos with John Vervaeke: Emergence, Emanation, and Bernardo Kastrup’s Idealism
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Intensity of Satisfaction and Free Energy (Thinking Abiogenesis with Bruce Damer)
See this link for context on Bruce Damer and David Deamer et al.’s abiogenesis hypothesis. … “To sum up: There are two species of process, macroscopic process, and microscopic process. The macroscopic process is the transition from attained actuality to actuality in attainment; while the microscopic process is the conversion of conditions which are merely…
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Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (2021)
A new revised and expanded edition of my book Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology is now available in paperback and electronic versions.
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Emanation, Emergence, and Meaning: Thinking with Vervaeke and Kastrup
Here’s a link to an academic article laying out the significance of Whitehead’s panexperientialism for the hard problem of consciousness: https://footnotes2plato.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/segall_ptsc_7_1_105-131.pdf John Vervaeke and I recorded a dialogue a few days after I recorded the video above. View it here: Dia-logos with John Vervaeke: Emergence, Emanation, and Bernardo Kastrup’s Idealism
Footnotes2Plato 