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: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  • Remembering the Repressed with Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner

    Judi: Hello, everybody. It’s my great pleasure to introduce Matt Segall. Matt is a PhD, a transdisciplinary researcher, philosopher, and teacher applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences. He is an associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Department here at CIIS. His presentation is titled Remembering the Repressed with Jung and Steiner. Matt…

  • Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process

    Below is a draft of a chapter for a book on radical and process theologies. My contribution is based on a conversation I had with Peter Rollins earlier this year: Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process By Matthew David Segall Ahead of turning to the body of this exposition, a…

  • Infinite Intimate: Dialoguing with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein

    Matt Segall: Hi Marc, pleasure to meet you. Marc Gafni: Good to meet you, Matt. Matt Segall: Really, as I said in my email, it’s an honor and it’s humbling to get to talk to you and Zak. I’ve had a chance to spend a little time with Zak. But yeah, great to connect with you. Where are…

  • Prehensions, Propositions, and the Cosmological Commons (dialogue with Tevin Naidu)

    Tevin Naidu recently hosted me on his Mind-Body Solutions podcast. Above is the video and below is an edited and somewhat condensed transcript. Tevin: I have shaped today’s episode around your paper, “Physics Within the Bounds of Feeling Alone.” It is a wonderful piece—a beautiful read. One thing I often ask my guests to do is give a…

  • Is a Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in the Natural Sciences?

    In this conversation, Mahon McCann invited me to reflect on what he referred to as a metaphysical revolution in natural science—gesturing toward the shift I and others have been tracking across disciplines including physics, biology, and cognitive science, where the old mechanistic, substance-based ontology seems increasingly inadequate to account for what’s actually being discovered and needing…

  • Renewing Religion: Dialogue with Philip Goff and Brendan Graham Dempsey

    Brendan Graham Dempsey and I sat down with Philip Goff to discuss all things “pan”: panmatheism, panentheism, pangentheism, panpsychism… oh, and Christianity! Philip describes how he arrived at panpsychism: after initially embracing physicalism and even flirting with illusionism, he came to feel that reducing the mind to physical processes was incoherent. Turning to thinkers like Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers,…

  • “The Phenomenon of Life” By Hans Jonas: A dialogue with Timothy Jackson about Jonas’ treatment of Darwinism

    In this session, Tim Jackson and I discuss Hans Jonas’ book The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. We focus in particular on two chapters, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism” and “Is God a Mathematician?”  Our aim was to explore how Jonas, emerging from an existential–phenomenological and religious–philosophical context, offered both criticisms and appreciations of Darwin’s…

  • Realizing the Noosphere

    Below are some reflections following my dialogue with Layman Pascal and  Brendan Graham Dempsey as part of Limicon 2025. The video of our dialogue should be online soon, and I’ll be sure to share it here.  It seems to me that this conversation (see prior episodes) is necessarily transdisciplinary, drawing on natural sciences, aesthetics and art, myth and religion,…

  • Science and Religion in a Participatory Cosmos

    Last night I was invited by the Center for Christogenesis at Villanova University to share some thoughts on how the science/religion dialogue may be transformed by a participatory approach to cosmology. The video will be made available in a few weeks to those who register with the Center. I began by playfully suggesting I’d be proceeding as…

  • Evolution: Theory or Theology? – Reflections on Whitehead, Wolfgang Smith, and the Rise of Participatory Science

    Two years ago, I sat down with the late philosopher and physicist, Wolfgang Smith, to discuss his novel approach to quantum physics and the need for a return to Platonic conceptions of reality. You can watch that conversation here (there’s also a complete transcript): Earlier today, I met with Dr. Smith’s collaborator and archivist, Richard,…

  • The Evolution of Consciousness and the Destiny of America (Dialogue with Formscapes)

    In a spontaneous three-hour livestream, Kehlan and Matt explored the thoughts of influential thinkers and the implications of America’s Pluto Return. They discussed consciousness evolution, materialism’s challenges, and the spiritual mission of the U.S. They expressed concerns over populism and the need for a moral vision amidst societal fragmentation, emphasizing a harmonious approach to spirituality…

  • Christ After Christianity: Metamodern Reconstructions of Religion (dialogue with Brendan Graham Dempsey)

    Transcript: Brendan Graham Dempsey: Hey? How’s it going? Brendan Graham Dempsey: Good to see you, too, man? Matt Segall: Yeah. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Who’s that? Matt Segall: This is Philo. Matt Segall: He loves attention, especially when we’ve got Zoom sessions. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Very cat-like. I have a cat named Shadow that looks very…

  • Christianity Beyond Itself (Dialogue with Jacob Kishere)

    Transcript by ChatGPT:  Host (Jacob Kishere): All right, welcome to Sense Space. Really, really happy to be joined today by Matthew Segall. Matthew has been connecting with a number of my friends and sister projects in the Lial web, like Cadell Last’s Philosophy Portal, Tim Adalin’s Voicecraft, John Vervaeke, and Brandon Graham Dempsey. He’s really shown up for…

  • Reflections on the Whitehead Centennial at Emerson Hall

    My trip to Harvard gave me occasion to reflect not only on Whitehead’s legacy, but on his resonances with Emerson and their shared vision of philosophical education. It was raining Thursday afternoon when I arrived in Cambridge. My room at The Friendly Inn was a few blocks from Harvard Yard, and with the rain slowed…

  • Discussing C. S. Peirce’s “A Guess at the Riddle” with Tim Jackson

    A rough transcript:  Matt Segall: Hey, Tim? One sec. Just getting my earmuffs on here. Timothy Jackson: Oh, good! Matt Segall: There we go! Hey! How’s it going? Timothy Jackson: Yeah, not too bad, man. How are you? Matt Segall: Doing well. Good morning. Timothy Jackson: Evening to you. Matt Segall: Yeah. Super excited to talk about Peirce. Haven’t read Peirce for…

  • The Relevance of Whitehead’s Process Theology to Natural Science

    Below is a rough transcript of a Cobb Institute class lecture I gave earlier today. I’m going to speak a little bit about the relevance, as I see it, of process theology to natural science. Whitehead was kept in print, I would say, for the better part of the second half of the 20th century…

  • Evolution as a Universal Learning Process

    “Meaning arises out of the most fundamental dynamics of the physical world: energy and information…[I]t is precisely via the thermodynamic forces driving cosmic evolution as a whole that meaning evolves into more complex biological and social registers such as we experience as conscious agents…[M]eaning is a particular kind of information—namely, information linking entities with their…

  • Evolution as Cosmic Cognition (dialogue with Richard Watson)

    Matt Segall: Well, where do I want to begin? Richard, I know that you do a lot of work on evolutionary theory and evolution as a learning process or a cognitive process. While you have a lot of respect, if that’s the way I can put it, for Darwin’s theory of natural selection, it seems not…

  • What is Metamodern Christianity?

    Yesterday, I listened to this wonderful dialogue between Brendan Graham Dempsey and John Vervaeke: They discuss Brendan’s proposal of a “metamodern” Christianity and explore the potential to reclaim faith in Christ in a contemporary, intellectually responsible way. The conversation revolved around the evolution of human understanding and relationship with what, following Jung, we can call “the…

  • Fantasy, Science, and Beauty in an Evolving Universe (dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Tim and I continued our dialogue about the Free Energy Principle and Whitehead’s cosmology. I began by recounting a short video of Karl Friston saying all human perception is fantasy. From there we discussed FEP’s instrumentalism, the Peirce-James pragmatist difference, and explored the implications of evolution as a general principle extending beyond just biology. We also…

  • Human Freedom and the Future of Spirituality (Dialoguing with Roman Campolo)

    Human Freedom and the Future of Spirituality (Dialoguing with Roman Campolo)

    Roman is a songwriter based out of Los Angeles with credits for K-Pop band BTS and legacy artists like Elton John and Stevie Wonder. The first 15 minutes of this didn’t record because of a technical glitch, but we felt the rest was worth sharing. We explore questions like: Where does spirituality fit into (post)modern…