Footnotes2Plato

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

Tag: Process philosophy

  • Truth in the Making: On the Possibility of Metaphysics in a World-in-Process

    “…‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.”  -Whitehead (PR 25) “There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the creativity in virtue of which there can be no ‘many things’ which are not sub­ordinated in a concrete unity. Thus a set of all actual occasions…

  • Thinking With David Krakauer

    Listening to David Krakauer on Jim Rutt’s “Worldview” podcast while making dinner made a few things snap into place for me. You can listen to it here: https://www.jimruttshow.com/david-krakauer-3/ I appreciate how rigorously he avoids collapsing the epistemic into the ontological. Krakauer is very lucid about wanting to prevent effective theories from hardening into a metaphysics. His…

  • Philosophies of Ontogenesis: Evolution by Artistic Selection

    First, have a listen to Timothy Jackson’s recent Lepht Hand podcast about the ontogenetic stance: Then have a read of his essay on Darwin, Simondon, and Battaile and the importance of a “variation first” approach that replaces classical effective theory ontology with an account of ontogenesis. One consequence of such an approach is that we can only…

  • There’s no scientific evidence that consciousness exists.

    Evidence, in a scientific age, is usually thought of in a very specific way. We tend to assume evidence means empirical measurement: can I record this on a camera, or on some kind of detector? Can I transform what I observe—signals, data—from something tangible in the world into a mathematical model? Can I make predictions,…

  • Anthroposophy and Critical Race Theory: Rudolf Steiner at Harvard Divinity School

    A few days ago, I shared a conference retrospective about Harvard Divinity School’s Rudolf Steiner centennial: I’ve since had a chance to listen carefully to another talk on the subject of racism in Steiner’s work by Gopi Vijaya. You can listen to it below: I appreciate the methodological clarity that Gopi brought to this topic,…

  • Contemporary Natural Philosophy Needs a New Theory of Forms

    In this disputation with Jacob Given and Adam Robert, I was defending the thesis that contemporary natural philosophy needs a new process-relational theory of forms, and that Whitehead’s notion of eternal objects can play that role. Adam and Jacob structured the session as a kind of updated medieval disputatio: I offered a thesis and initial…

  • Nick Fuentes and the Hollow Soul of America: Is there an America After the Idols?

    Trump seems to be losing control over the MAGA movement he created. His surrogates remain confused, comparing Zoran Mamdani’s success mobilizing young New Yorkers to the rise of the Hitler Youth. Meanwhile Zoomers on the right are openly embracing white supremacism.  Last night, I finally watched Tucker Carlson’s long interview with Nick Fuentes. I hesitate to…

  • Patterns Are Not Puppeteers: The Return and Reformation of Platonic Form in Biology

    I’ve discussed the return of Platonism in biology before. The following recounts some of what I discussed with Bonnitta Roy as a visitor at The Pop-Up School earlier today. The main driver of the Platonic turn in the life sciences is Michael Levin’s remarkable lab research on bioelectric patterning in morphogenesis. He is now framing this as…

  • The Cosmic Poetry of Whitehead’s Philosophy: Notes on my dialogue with Ingrid Rieser

    You can listen to my conversation with Ingrid over on her Forest of Thought podcast, or read the revised transcript of my remarks below. We recorded this in Claremont, CA back in June at the “Is It Too Late?” conference on ecological civilization (you can watch my conference presentation on Whitehead’s advice for the business mind here).  “Philosopher” is…

  • Between the Speculative and the Prosaic: Life, Imagination, and Individuation

    Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). I try to argue against both scientistic neutrality and dogmatic theology. I believe that any attempt at thinking the most general conditions of reality inevitably touches the spiritual. If it did not then natural science…

  • The Return of Form in Biology: Thinking Through Platonic Morphospace

    The mystery of biological form has led some biologists, most prominently Michael Levin, back to Plato’s theory of Ideas. Levin is driven primarily by the surprising empirical findings of his lab. He argues that his results are best explained by reference to modes of causality not traceable to genetic histories or molecular components. While he has…

  • Jung, Simondon, and the Ontogenesis of Philosophy

    We just wrapped the “Forever Jung” conference co-hosted by CIIS and the San Francisco Jung Institute. Tim couldn’t be with us in person, but I enjoyed his Zoom presentation on Jung and Simondon (video of his talk should be online soon; you can listen to mine here).  Below are some LLM assisted notes on Tim’s exegesis of the…

  • Matter, Life, and Mind: Love as a Cosmological Power

    This was recorded on Saturday, September 13, 2025 as part of the Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, CO. Below is the recording and a lightly edited transcript.  Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by thanking you all for allowing your curiosity to draw you here. We are engaged in a…

  • Birthing a New Cosmology (reflections on my dialogue with Alexander Beiner)

    I enjoyed dialoguing with my friend Alexander Beiner this morning. The recording will be published on Kainos soon. He asked whether I had a sense for whether the atheistic, secular orientation in academia is thawing, opening room for alternatives to physicalism. I do sense that! Panpsychism and idealism are the two broad categories that capture much of…

  • Value at the Root: Cultivating Virtue in a Post-Truth World

    Context  The following reflections grow out of my live dialogue with Bonnitta Roy about the metaphysics of value. She’ll be sharing the discussion in her pop-up school for those who subscribe. Here I wanted to offer some further reflections on what was stirred up in me. A few orienting points: First, we wanted our philosophical conversation to…

  • Notes from the Edge of the Ordinary

    Recapping my time in the twilight zone between physics and psi in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago. I left the DOPS Psi Theory Meeting feeling like I’d been sitting around a camp fire telling ghost stories at the edge of a new continent. In fact, we spent the week together in the Marriott Hotel’s appropriately named Louis…

  • Cosmology, Democracy, and the Spirit of the Earth: Talking Process-Relational Political Theology with Tripp Fuller and Aaron Simmons

    I joined Tripp and Aaron to discuss the changing role of religion in public life in our tumultuous political moment. We were discussing my lecture offering a Whiteheadian process cosmological response to Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. “Between Earth and Empire: Cosmopolitical Democracy Beyond the Liberal Horizon“ When Tripp asked how a process philosopher might…

  • Creativity and the Cross: Martinus, Bergson, and Whitehead in Dialogue

    A conversation with Pedro Brea and Karsten Jensen. LLM generated transcript below. Matt Segall: Hey, Karsten. Pedro Brea: Hey! Karsten Jensen: Hi, Matt! Hi, Pedro! I’m so happy you both agreed to have this conversation with me, and I really look forward to it. Matt Segall: Likewise. My exposure to Martinus was through you, Karsten, and I really appreciated…

  • Romanticizing Evolution: Whitehead’s Organic Realism and the Return of Organic Science

    A transcript of my talk at the Cognizing Life conference in Tübingen, Germany July 18, 2025. Other contributors at the Cognizing Life conference include: Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Wien), Levi Haeck(Ghent), Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman(Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson (Fairfax), Gregory Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösser (Tübingen), Matthew Segall (San Francisco), Joan Steigerwald (Toronto), Georg Toepfer (Berlin), Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent), Denis Walsh (Toronto). See also my responses to a (rather reductive!) geneticist. I draw on some…

  • Ever-Living Fire: Process Philosophy and Plasma Cosmology

    Below is a transcript of my talk at the Process Philosophy, Plasma Cosmology, and Transpersonal Psychology meeting in Exeter, UK, which took place July 24-27, 2025. Other attendees include Robert Temple, Timothy E. Eastman, Barnard Carr, Steve Odin, Andrew M. Davis, Nick Cook, Ashton Arnoldy, John Priestland, Massimo Teodorani (virtual), Jeffery Kripal (virtual), Kelly Chase,…

  • A Biophilosophical Dialogue: Conversations at the Evolutionary Edge of the Life Sciences 

    The conversation above occurred earlier today at the end of a two-day conference I cohosted with Spyridon Koutroufinis focused on the revitalization of biophilosophy. You can learn more about it at the Center for Process Studieswebsite. You can find a YouTube playlist of all the talks at this link.  Two days of phenomenal presentations of ideas that push at…