Category: Alfred North Whitehead
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PDF of “Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology” [and Table of Contents]
Here’s a hyperlinked outline of a long essay on Whitehead and scientific cosmology that I’ll post in sections. Here is a link to a PDF of the complete essay: Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of A. N. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology Table of Contents I. Introduction: From Physics to Philosophy II. The…
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Cosmopolitical Theology: Violence, Value, and the Push for a Planetary People
This is a talk I gave back in September for my colleagues at CIIS during our annual retreat to Esalen in Big Sur, CA.
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David Harvey on Zero Growth Economy (w/ A. N. Whitehead)
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The Varieties of Naturalistic Philosophy
If a pushy philosopher were to back me into a corner and force me to choose one or the other, naturalism or supernaturalism, I would choose naturalism. But I’d find myself wanting to ask, as Socrates might, what is meant by “nature”? Physics becomes metaphysics as soon as the word–”nature”–is pronounced. The logos of language…
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Responding to Thunderfoot’s Scientific Materialism
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American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner, ed. by Robert McDermott
A note for those interested in American philosophy: my adviser, mentor, and friend Robert McDermott is editing a text to be published later this year by Lindisfarne Books entitled American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner. It includes essays on Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, and a chapter on feminism. I’m currently copy editing several of…
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Thinking With Whitehead: Science, Sunsets, and the Bifurcation of Nature
Thinking with Whitehead: The Scientific Revolution and the Bifurcation of Nature The scientific revolution, beginning perhaps with Copernicus’ rediscovery of the heliocentric model of the solar system early in the 16th century, and culminating perhaps with Newton’s formulation of the laws of motion and universal gravitation towards the end of the 17th century, fundamentally…
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Thinking with rocks.
These rocks, stacked by human hands along a canyon creek near Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, are not simply aggregates or piles. Neither are they simply the freely created artwork of humans. The left-hand stack of eleven rocks (if you count earth) towers toward the sky, together with its local and cosmic ecologies achieving…
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Whitehead’s Process Atomism (response to Graham Harman)
Graham Harman has jumped in offering his own response to my recent comment directed at Levi Bryant regarding his interpretation of Whitehead. The core issue, for Harman, is whether Whitehead’s position is ultimately reducible to some form of relationism, wherein an actual occasion is no more than the sum of its prehensions, or whether Whitehead’s…
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Levi Bryant Misreading Whitehead?
Re-posting my comment to Bryant’s recent criticism of Whitehead and process-relational thought below: Levi, I’m not so sure treating an actual occasion as a “bundle of prehensions” is at all faithful to Whitehead’s scheme. Maybe you arguing that some other aspect of his thought forces him into an inconsistency on this point? If that’s not…
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Whitehead’s Endo-Theology
Levi Bryant/Larval Subjects has laid down a clear and clarifying plumb-line definition for a contentious word that finds itself being thrown around the OOO blogosphere from time to time: Correlationism. It has a fascinating biography. Harman recently offered his version of its history and conceptual origin. Bryant’s was a very helpful post for me. His…
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Whiteheadian thoughts on the thingliness of ideas (responses to Archive Fire and Knowledge Ecology)
Michael/Archive Fire and Adam/Knowledge Ecology are at it again, working to sort through the material, semiotic, and ideational strands of the cosmic mesh to figure out what is real and what isn’t. In both positions, I detect a desire for ecological realism, the sort of realism where Santa Claus, mountain pine beetles, global capitalism, black…
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On reading Plato…
Everyone already knows Alfred North Whitehead’s over-cited remark about all of European philosophy being but a series of footnotes to Plato. If you’ve somehow forgotten its near exact wording, just follow Plato’s upward pointing finger to the top of this blog for a reminder. Why near exact? I left out the descriptor “European…” that comes before…
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“The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal” (2012) by Joshua Ramey
I’ve just been made aware of this very new book on Deleuze and the Hermetic tradition. As the commenter who brought it to my attention already guessed, it couldn’t be more relevant to my current project. Hermeticism has long been an interest of mine; I’ve even described myself as a Christian Hermeticist in the past. The…
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Whitehead’s Divine Function (response to Knowledge Ecology)
Adam/Knowledge Ecology has responded to my comment about the role of the divine in Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme. Let me say at the get go that Whitehead himself acknowledged that he didn’t sufficiently work out the relationship between God and the World in Process and Reality. I approach Whitehead’s scheme, then, as a hacker might go…
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Returning to Whitehead…
After finishing my first comprehensive exam on Schelling, its now time to dive back into Whitehead. For starters, Adam over at the new minimalist Knowledge Ecology has recently been posting brilliant snippets of what I believe is a longer tract he is writing about the ecology of ideas. Here is one titled “The Alien Light“: On…
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Schelling on Nature, Humanity, and God (re-reading Iain Hamilton Grant)
Last year, some colleagues and I at CIIS participated in a panel discussion on Speculative Realism called “Here Comes Everything.” My lecture drew primarily upon Grant’s text Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (2006). This summer, I’ve been doing research for a comprehensive exam on the recent resurgence of Schellingian philosophy (HERE is my reading list). I…
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Philosophy of the Human in Whitehead and Schelling (response to Knowledge-Ecology)
Adam/Knowledge-Ecology just posted a fine reflection on the place of the human in nature. Below is my response. I think there is an elephant in the room here. Just before the line you quote in Modes of Thought, Whitehead says “In mankind, the dominant dependence on bodily functioning seems still there. And yet the life of…
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“From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” by Arran Gare
I stumbled upon this great essay on Schelling and process metaphysics recently published in the journal Cosmos and History by Prof. Arran Gare. He really makes it clear how compatible Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is with Whitehead’s cosmological scheme. “From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization” Here is a sample: Schelling’s work…
Footnotes2Plato 