Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Category: Henri Bergson

  • My Online Course this Fall: PARP 6133 – Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology

    My Online Course this Fall: PARP 6133 – Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology

    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.

  • New Online Masters Degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness

    New Online Masters Degree in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness

    CIIS is accepting applications for the Fall 2017 semester for a new online masters degree program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness with concentrations in Archetypal Cosmology, Integral Ecology, and Process Philosophy. I’ll be teaching mostly in the Process Philosophy Concentration. Check out the website for more information.    

  • Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead and Cosmology (2nd edition)

    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.  

  • Pre-Defense Dissertation Draft Completed

    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,…

  • The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help From Bergson and Whitehead

    Above is my talk for the Jean Gebser Society conference held at the California Institute of Integral Studies the weekend of October 16th. Title: The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help from Bergson and Whitehead Abstract: Gebser suggests that the world-constituting reality of time first irrupted into Western consciousness with the publication…

  • Time Eats Itself, by Henri Bergson

    from Creative Evolution (Ch. 1, pgs. 4-6): “…as regards the psychical life unfolding beneath the symbols which conceal it, we readily perceive that time is just the stuff it is made of. There is, moreover, no stuff more resistant nor more substantial. For our duration is not merely one instant replacing another; if it were,…

  • Space and Time in an Ontology of Organism

    I’m thoroughly enjoying Jimena Canales social, scientific, and philosophical history of the Einstein-Bergson debate in The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time. There are quite a few pages on Whitehead’s alternative rendering of relativity theory. There is one place (198-99) where Canales, while commenting on George Herbert…

  • Latour’s Space-Time Experiment: Thinking with Whitehead

    Watch Olafur Eliasson and Bruno Latour re-enact the debate between Einstein and Bergson about space-time and the polarity between art and science.  Though I first heard about Latour’s re-enactment of the Einstein-Bergson debate several years ago, I only uncovered the videos of this conversation while engaging in a FaceBook thread yesterday about Einstein’s bloc universe. Einstein famously claimed that time as we experience…

  • Process, Relationality, and Individuality: Graham Harman and Alfred Norht Whitehead (response to Jonathan Cobb)

    Relevant links to the argument between me, Levi Bryant, and Graham Harman: Levi Bryant Mis-reading Whitehead? Harman’s response to me Whitehead’s Process Atomism (Response to Graham Harman) Object as subject-superject, or why Harman is wrong about Whitehead Occasionalism in Whitehead and Harman Harman’s Crucified Objects and Whitehead’s God: More on Withdrawal    

  • Towards a “Thermopolitics” (question for Levi Bryant)

    Levi Bryant just posted on what he is calling “thermopolitics.” He wants to shift the discourse in philosophy away from its exclusive focus on linguistic analysis and the critique of ideological superstructures toward the energetics of the universe that provide the condition for their possibility. Bryant writes: This is not a metaphor.  At this very…

  • Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy from Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead

    I’ve just submitted my dissertation proposal for review. Click on the title below for the PDF. Etheric Imagination in Process Philosophy From Schelling and Steiner to Whitehead I welcome suggestions, critiques, sources, and/or extensions. Basically, I’m doing a comparative study of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, the esotericist Rudolf Steiner, and the mathematician and cosmologist Alfred North…

  • Teleology in Science? Purpose in Nature?

    I’ve just read Grant Maxwell’s critique of a HuffPo piece by Matthew Hutson. I enjoyed his rebuttal of Hutson’s blanket rejection realism regarding teleology. I am also enjoying the discussion Grant is having with Hutson down in the comments. I do not think Hutson has read the work of organic/creative finalists like Bergson or Whitehead.…

  • Notes on Intro and Ch. 1 of “Difference and Repetition” by Gilles Deleuze

    As Adam/Knowledge Ecology has mentioned, a few of us are doing a reading group on Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Here are my notes for our first session. Notes for Introduction and Chapter 1 of Difference and Repetition by Deleuze By Matt Segall Preface: Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is an initiatory text that, rather than putting…

  • Josefina Burgos – “Becoming: A Concept Where Science and Philosophy Can Meet”

    A colleague at CIIS presenting on Process Philosophy in Whitehead, Bergson, and Teilhard last Friday.

  • [Space-Time in an Ontology of Organism] The Relevance of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology

    Space-Time in an Ontology of Organism “The metrical properties associated with space-time should not be defined a priori, but should characterize the pattern of the environment that is inseparable from [the endurance of organisms].” -Stengers141   Whitehead’s amendments to the general theory of evolution follow from his desire to re-construct the theory on the basis…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Gilles Deleuze’s and Arthur Young’s Bergsonisms: An Outline and Notes

    I’ve just finished Gilles Deleuze’s book Bergsonism (1990). Here is my outline of the text: Deleuze’s Bergsonism: Notes and Outline. Bergson suggested that the Absolute had to be approached from two sides, the scientific and the metaphysical. Science/Intellect considers the universe according to a series of states. Metaphysics/Intuition considers the universe according to the self-differentiation of…

  • “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…

  • Bifurcations between Bergson and Einstein

    Thanks to Adam for bringing this video to my attention. Bruno Latour speaks above about how contemporary philosophy should re-interpret the verdict of the 1922 exchange between the metaphysician Henri Bergson and the physicist Albert Einstein. He finds a re-interpretation of this debate important especially in light of the new ecological constraints upon 21st century…

  • Questions about Objects: “I” Myself and the Earth

    I’ve just finished Harman’s Guerilla Metaphysics, and I’m thoroughly confused by what he had to say about time and space in the final pages. The following is an initial attempt to sort through a small bit of the chaos he has made of the cosmos I am yearning to inhabit. ——————————– An object is anything…