Category: imagination
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The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World Still at War with Itself (draft article)
I understand that the threefolding idea is likely to upset people on all sides of the political spectrum. I am sharing the article at this stage to invite criticism, as my aim is not to antagonize but to dig below the superficialities that separate well-meaning people. … The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World…
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Revolutionary Left podcast introducing German Idealism
I was invited back on the Rev Left podcast to lay out the dialectical twists and turns of the German Idealist movement. Link here: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/german-idealism
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Today is an endless genesis.
A bit of cosmocinematic spellcasting inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Interdisciplinary Astronomy Course Today was June the tenth. The year two thousand and twenty two. Today, the Earth continued weaving its way through space. Through a space twisted out of time by lunar tides and solar seasons. A space that did not pre-exist our movement through…
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The Spirituality of Process Philosophy (dialogue with Preston Bryant)
Had a great time chatting with Preston this morning.
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![“Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof” [Review]](https://footnotes2plato.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/psyche-unbound.png?w=1024)
“Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof” [Review]
Tarnas, Richard, & Kelly, Sean (Eds.). (2021). Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof. Foreword by Rick Doblin. Sante Fe, NM: Synergetic Press & the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. xxvi + 428 pp. ISBN: 9780998276526. Hardcover. $35. Reviewed by Matthew D. Segall. It was 1973 when Dr. Stanislav Grof left what was then the last surviving…
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Revolutionary Left Radio podcast on Whitehead and Dialectics
Have a listen to my wide-ranging conversation with Breht on Whitehead, Marxist dialectics, and more. https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/whitehead
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Complete Seminar (Sessions 1-9)
Above is an embedded playlist featuring all 9 of the Eastman Seminars that I facilitated for the Science Advisory Committee of the Cobb Institute from June 2021 through February 2022. Tim Eastman, a plasma physicist and philosopher, is the author of Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). These seminars invited other scholars…
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Dialogue with Bernardo Kastrup: Translating between Analytic Idealism and Process-Relationalism
My long-overdue conversation with Bernardo Kastrup is above. I am pleased with how this turned out. We mostly attempted to translate between our respective orientations, finding many overlaps despite differences of emphasis. I think important differences remain, though we’ll have to iron those out together in the future. A few thoughts about what we discussed:…
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Principles to Guide Philosophical Community (2021) By Eli Kramer (draft review)
The preprint book review below is forthcoming in World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research ….. ELI KRAMER, Intercultural Modes of Philosophy, Volume One: Principles to Guide Philosophical Community. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021: 382 pages. [Reviewed by MATTHEW D. SEGALL, Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San…
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Tim Eastman Wrap-Up Session: Quantum Physics, Process Philosophy, and the Simulation Hypothesis
We wrapped up our 9-part seminar series on plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy E. Eastman’s book over the weekend. Above is the recording of the final session, which included responses by Michael Epperson and me, followed by a really great dialogue among the other participants. The simulation hypothesis came up and was challenged in light…
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The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis
I just sent a draft of this coauthored essay off to the editors. Astrobiologist Bruce Damer and I have been building toward this for a few years. I’m thrilled to have gotten it to this point, and looking forward to peer review! The essay will be featured in a book coming out of this conference…
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Goethe and Whitehead: Steps to a Science of Organism
This essay was slated to be published in the Holistic Science Journal, but it looks like it will end up somewhere else later this year. I’ve been sitting on it for a while, though, and wanted to share it here. Feedback welcome. “Goethe and Whitehead: Steps to a Science of Organism” (2021):
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Social Threefolding
“The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is building up the Future. The Times—the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to be studied…
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On Whitehead’s Sociological Theory in “Adventures of Ideas”
Whitehead’s goal is these pages to elucidate the concept of civilization. He operates under the assumption that human civilization has profound cosmological significance. The fact that civilized beings have emerged in the course of the evolution of the universe tells us something important about the nature and perhaps even the purpose of that universe. His…
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“Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances” by Catherine Keller
Let us first recall why Keller has chosen to “dreamread” John of Patmos’ Book of Revelation. As a process theologian, it is no surprise that she would be interested in a Biblical text. But her purpose is not merely to read John’s missive back into its 1st century CE historical context. Nor is her intent to…
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“Another End of the World is Possible” by Servigne, Stevens, and Chapelle
“How could we call ‘rational’ an ideal of civilization guilty of a forecasting error so massive that it prevents parents from leaving a habitable world to their children?”—Bruno Latour “The system is collapsing all around us just at the time when most people have lost the ability to imagine that anything else could exist.” —David Graeber…
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Towards a Mycological Metaphysics
The mycologist Merlin Sheldrake recently published Entangled Life (2020). The book revels in the power of fungi to “make us question our categories,” thereby “[changing] the way we think and imagine” (14, 214). A few pages in, Merlin defines mycelium as a process, rather than a thing (6). I am inclined to agree. As a…
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Psychedelics Today podcast on Consciousness, Capitalism, and Philosophy
I had a great conversation with Joe Moore of Psychedelics Today a couple months back, and the podcast was just released today. Have a listen. In this episode, Joe interviews philosopher, author, and assistant professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco: Matthew D. Segall, Ph.D.…
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Whitehead: Purpose and Reason
Originally posted on conceptual prehension: Matthew Segall (who blogs over at footnotes2plato.com) has recently published a revised edition of his book Physics of the World Soul–an exploration of Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, bringing it into dialogue with some recent science and discussing its relevance for our current era of ecological and intellectual turbulence. Reading…
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Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (2021)
A new revised and expanded edition of my book Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology is now available in paperback and electronic versions.
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A Cartoon Intro to Whitehead’s Organic Cosmology
Footnotes2Plato 