“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead
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Research notes on the pragmatisms of James and Dewey
…continuing research for my dissertation… I’ve been enjoying Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001). With an insightful synopsis of American history from the Civil War until about WWI as the backdrop, Menand traces the intellectual development of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Read more
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Stephen Hawking explains the universe over on PZ Myers’ blog
I’ve jumped into a thread over at Pharyngula to offer my opinion of Hawking’s attempt to explain the Universe positivistically. Read more
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Theism/Atheism: Imagination and Ontological Openness
There is no need to oppose one possibility with the other. Speculative philosophy’s task is to overcome the dualistic limitations of sense-understanding (subject v. object, quality v. substance) by way of a schematic renewal of (or participatory intervention into) our habitual way of imaging the world. Speculative philosophy must hold the binary (God/no-God) together to Read more
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Philosophy Blogging, OOO/SR, Nihilism, and God
It is difficult to describe the effects of the blogosphere on consciousness, especially when the information communicated via blogs pretends to be philosophical. The blog, as a medium, has not yet been swallowed as radio by TV, or the printed word by the digital hyperlink, and so gaining perspective on its effects remains difficult. We’re Read more
Alan Watts, Alfred North Whitehead, Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudolf Steiner, speculative realism, Timothy Morton
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Whitehead on God and the Universe in “Modes of Thought”
It might be helpful for the last pages of Whitehead’s 5th lecture in Modes of Thought (1938), “Forms of Process,” to be available online. I’d enjoy unpacking the implications of what is said here, and so I will post them in the hopes that they be productive of further reflection on my part, as well as generative of Read more
“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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