Tag: ecology
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The Art and Science of Improvisation: Dialogue with Merlin Sheldrake and Tim Jackson
I recently had a fascinating conversation with mycologist Merlin Sheldrake and evolutionary toxinologist Tim Jackson. Our discussion revolved around the themes of improvisation, the nature of life, and the interplay between order and chaos in both biology and philosophy. Merlin shared his insights on improvisation in the context of jazz music, which led us to…
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Whitehead’s ‘Foresight,’ Or How Philosophy Can Shape the Business Mind of the Future
What follows is a brief essay reflecting on the relevance of Whitehead’s philosophy for shaping the business mind of the future. It is written for the Institute of Transactional Philosophy. I’ll be elaborating on these ideas at their annual Institute Study next month. Whitehead’s “Foresight,” Or How Philosophy Can Shape the Business Mind of the…
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Intuiting Life Seminar Series
Above is a playlist including four sessions from the “Intuiting Life” seminar series hosted by the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee. Click on the hamburger menu icon in the top right corner of the video to see the playlist. The series featured the authors of a new book, Process-Philosophical Perspectives on Biology: Intuiting Life (2023),…
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Cosmic History in Steiner and Whitehead (dialogue with Formscapes)
This was a really fun conversation with Formscapes (check out his content on YouTube). The dialogue begins with Whitehead’s ideas on hybrid prehension and how they might relate to Steiner’s cultivation of higher organs of spiritual perception. Whitehead appears to have been open to esoteric ideas, based on some evidence that he tried contacting his…
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Love and Death in the Gaianthropocene (prologue to my talk at Boom Festival)
Sharing some thoughts I’ll expand upon during my talk at Boom Festival next week. A transcript of this video: Next week, I’ll be in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal to attend the Boom Festival. This festival is known for its psytrance, cultural offerings, and art. I’ve often heard it described as the European version of Burning Man, though I’m…
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In dialogue with David Abram
This conversation was recorded earlier this year in San Francisco. TRANSCRIPT This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Author, cultural ecologist, and geo philosopher David…
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Motor Oil and Panpsychism: Dialoging with Artist Johnna Arnold
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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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“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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“How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times” by Servigne and Stevens
Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens cover a lot of territory in this book. It is clear enough to anyone open to even consider reading it that climate change and other ecological catastrophes are already occurring and will only intensify. This book was published in French in 2015, well before the Covid-19 pandemic. While the origins of this virus…
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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology Podcast
Had a great time chatting with my friend Dr. Sam Mickey about Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.
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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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Meta-Politics – a discussion with Layman Pascal on “The Integral Stage”
META-POLITICS – This is the first episode in a new conversation series between Layman Pascal and Matthew T. Segall. After touching on the deep strangeness of our time, and on the importance of finding a new post/metaphysical nexus for politics, religion, and ecology (a reintegration of the value spheres) Layman and Matt take up an…
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The Anthropocene: End Times/New Age
Sean Kelly and I delivered this a few weeks ago at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA at our philosophy program’s annual retreat.
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EcoCiv podcast on Whitehead, Marx, and Ecological Civilization
Andrew Schwartz and I discussed Marx and Whitehead last week. Have a listen.
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Whitehead and Marx: A Cosmopolitical Approach to Ecological Civilization
Below is a recording of my talk (a video first, then audio only that includes the discussion afterwards). I’ve also included an extended draft of some notes I took to prepare my talk. Finally, I’ve included my notes taken while listening to Jason Moore during yesterday’s opening lecture. Fifth annual conference of the World-Ecology Research…
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Economics as though life on Earth depended on it
Some related essays on integral economics, a Christian ecological worldview, and slavery and capitalism.
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On the Matter of Life: Towards an Integral Economics
I’m posting a revised version of a long essay I wrote a decade ago. It draws on thinkers including Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Irwin Thompson, Francisco Varela, Alfred North Whitehead, and Alf Hornborg in search of a more integral approach to economics. I had not yet encountered the social ecology…