"The safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." —Alfred North Whitehead
I'm teaching another online graduate course for CIIS.edu this Fall (Aug-Dec) called Whitehead's Adventure in Cosmology: Toward a Physics of the World-Soul (PARP 6133). Here is the proposed syllabus. Auditors and Special Students are welcome to enroll. Email me at msegall@ciis.edu for more information about how to do this.
I decided to revise and republish a second edition of my 2013 monograph on the relevance of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism to contemporary scientific cosmology. It should be available in paperback in a few weeks. Here is a PDF if you prefer an electronic version.
My dissertation defense is on Monday morning. I've just finished the "pre-defense" draft. I have until April 11th to finalize the published version. Below are the abstract, table of contents, and acknowledgements. Jacob Sherman, PhD, Chair Associate Professor, Philosophy and Religion Department, California Institute of Integral Studies Sean Kelly, PhD Professor, Philosophy and Religion Department, …
Section III: Alienation from Nature, How it Arose Track 3: Late Modernity and Its Re-Imagining (Lebus Hall, 201) Friday, June 5 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM Track Session #1a – Tam Hunt “Absent-minded science and the ‘deep science’ antidote” 2:45 PM – 3:30 PM Track Session #1b – Christian de Quincey “A Radical Science of …
A talk I gave at my graduate program's retreat at Esalen a few weeks ago. Part 1: Part 2: A comment by media theorist and professor of communication Corey Anton about what I say around the 3 minute mark of part 2 about the death/rebirth mystery of cosmogenesis: Corey Anton: Hi Matt, Thanks again. A …
"Every scientific man in order to preserve his reputation has to say he dislikes metaphysics. What he means is he dislikes having his metaphysics criticized." -Alfred North Whitehead Over at Knowledge-Ecology, Adam Robbert has thrown a few fantastic posts up unpacking his vision of the ecology of ideas. Concepts are capacities skillfully enacted in ecological contexts. …
Continue reading "The Ecology of Ideas: Enacting Worlds Worth Living In"
It is remarkable how similar Nietzsche's musings on perspectivism are to Whitehead's process-relational ontology. I was reminded of their congruence while re-reading excerpts from Nietzsche's The Will to Power (published in Mark Taylor's Deconstruction in Context). Of course, one might read Whitehead's somewhat Platonic cosmological scheme (which includes reformed conceptions of teleology, god, eternal objects, and so on) as directly opposed …
