"The safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." —Alfred North Whitehead
Below is the draft of a paper I'll present at next week's International Whitehead Conference in the Azores. Feedback appreciated! 2017 International Whitehead Conference Matthew T. Segall The Place of Life in the Cosmos: Feeling the Origin of Organism “A philosophic outlook is the very foundation of thought and of life. The sort of …
Here is anthropologist Anne Buchanan on the post-truth era in natural science. I was reminded of my post on the federally-funded Brain Initiative a few years ago. Buchanan includes geneticist Ken Weiss' list of facts that do not fit the reductionistic paradigm of "normal science" in biology at the end of her post. Weiss and Buchanan …
Continue reading "Towards a new root image in natural science…"
Conference website. Friday, June 5th at 4:45pm: Whitehead's Non-Modern Philosophy: Cosmos and Polis in the Pluriverse Saturday June 6th at 2:30pm: Religion in Human and Cosmic Evolution: Whitehead's Alternative Vision I have a lot to say about some of the questions that came up during the discussion (~58 minutes into the video), especially the issues …
For more from Smith, see this co-authored essay "The Origin of Life": "As we see it, the early steps on the way to life are an inevitable, incremental result of the operation of the laws of chemistry and physics operating under the conditions that existed on the early Earth, a result that can be understood …
Continue reading "Eric Smith on the geochemical inevitability of life on earth"
This was an early draft of a paper I presented at the 10th International Whitehead Conference. For video of the actual presentation, click HERE. --------------------------------- Abstract: This talk compares several approaches to the emergence of religion in human evolution. I contrast Robert Bellah's and Alfred North Whitehead's pluralistic, cosmologically oriented accounts to Daniel Dennett's reductionistic, …
Continue reading "Religion in Human and Cosmic Evolution: Whitehead’s Alternative Vision"
Below is my lecture on German Idealism and Romanticism given yesterday (Sept. 30) for MA students enrolled in an Introduction to Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness course at CIIS.
In preparation for a lecture on mind and nature in German Idealism, I'm working my way through Kant's third of three critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). Prior to this sitting, I've only ever spent time with small sections of this text. For example, sections 75 and 76 in the second part …
