“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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The Birth of Life & the Future of Consciousness
UPDATE. Here’s a video of our dialogue: Next Tuesday, October 22nd at 7pm, I’ll be in dialogue with astrobiologist Bruce Damer about his hot spring hypothesis of the origins of life. For Bay Area locals, the event will take place at the Mission Street campus of California Institute of Integral Studies and is free and Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, autopoiesis, Darwin, Descartes, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, imagination, Modern Philosophy
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Sundays with Whitehead
Below are a couple of video sessions from my course on Whitehead’s Process & Reality. Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Ancient Philosophy, Descartes, Hume, Isabelle Stengers, Kant, Modern Philosophy, Plato, reason, Religion, Romantic Philosophy
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Physicalism and Its Discontents: A Study in Whitehead’s Panexperientialist Alternative [draft]
UPDATE: Here is a PDF of the final draft accepted for publication under the revised title “The Varieties of Physicalist Ontology: A Study in Whitehead’s Process-Relational Alternative.” I’ve just finished drafting this article, which will hopefully be featured in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences focused on panpsychism. It still Read more
Albert Einstein, Alfred North Whitehead, Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle, autopoiesis, Bruno Latour, Copernican Revolution, Daniel Dennett, Darwin, David Chalmers, Descartes, Evan Thompson, Extended Mind, Francisco Varela, Galileo, Gilles Deleuze, Graham Harman, Hegel, Henri Bergson, Heraclitus, Hume, imagination, Isabelle Stengers, Kant, Levi Bryant, Modern Philosophy, Paul Churchland, Plato, poetry, Ray Brassier, reason, Religion, Romantic Philosophy, speculative realism, William James
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Thinking with Whitehead about boundaries, perpetual perishing, and perception
Maybe, as one of my graduate students suggested, mind is more like a liquid that flows through and between things than it is a light projected onto and reflecting off of their surfaces (bracketing for now the fact that light also behaves like a fluid). This is an imaginative way of describing the difference between Read more
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“Astrology: Science, Art, or Religion?”
Here’s the recording of a lecture that Becca Tarnas and I delivered last night for the Atlanta Astrological Society. Here are some relevant links if you want a more in depth discussion on some of what I mention in this lecture: The Politics of Renaissance Hermeticism, and the Magic of Science The Copernican Odyssey: From Read more
Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle, Carl Jung, Copernican Revolution, Galileo, imagination, James Hillman, Kepler, Modern Philosophy, Plato, politics, Ptolemy, reason, Religion
“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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