Tag: quantum physics
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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…
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Process Metaphysics Meets Possibilist Physics (Dialoguing with Ruth Kastner)
Ruth Kastner and I first met several years ago in the context of a seminar series focused on plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman’s work. Ruth also participated in the “Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist” conference I co-hosted at CIIS last March. We’ve been meaning to sit down to see what bridges might…
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Process, Reality, and Context: Timothy E. Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot – Summaries of the Seminar Series
Below is a detailed summary of each of the nine seminar sessions that ran monthly from June 2021 through February 2022 focused on Dr. Timothy Eastman’s book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). This event was sponsored by the Cobb Institute’s Science Advisory Committee, which I chair. You can read my review of…
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‘No Thinker Thinks Twice’: On the Attempt to Catch Whitehead in the Act of Philosophizing
What follows are some preliminary reflections on my panel presentation for the “Whitehead at Harvard” centennial conference this Friday, September 27. This Friday, I’ll be traveling to Harvard University for “A Century of Process Thought: Commemorating Whitehead’s Legacy at Harvard and Beyond.” The event is free to attend in-person or online (follow the link to register). The…
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Quantum Physics and Process Metaphysics (dialogue with Flavio Lanfanconi)
A transcript of our conversation: Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Good to see you. Great. I was just trying to keep up with everything you’ve posted recently. It’s difficult, but… Matt Segall: Sorry about that. Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Never mind, it’s great. I was just finishing your last conversation with… Matt Segall: Roman. Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Roman. Yep, exactly. I’m bad with…
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Platonic Physics: In Dialogue with Wolfgang Smith
Here is my conversation, recorded yesterday, with Dr. Wolfgang Smith. His new book PHYSICS: A Science in Quest of an Ontology is available from many online bookstores. We discussed a range of topics, including wholeness in physics and mathematics, Whitehead and Russell’s different interpretations of the failure of the Principia Mathematica project, the fallacy of…
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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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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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![Review of Timothy E. Eastman’s ‘Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context’ [DRAFT]](https://footnotes2plato.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/51yfucb2gml.jpeg?w=855)
Review of Timothy E. Eastman’s ‘Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context’ [DRAFT]
Click here for a PDF of this review, published in Process Studies. …. TIMOTHY E. EASTMAN, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020: 344 pages. [Reviewed by: MATTHEW D. SEGALL, Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, 94103, USA. <msegall@ciis.edu>.] …
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot (session 1)
Last Saturday, the Science Advisory Committee for the Cobb Institute hosted plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman for the first of 8 dialogue sessions focused on his new book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). The book sketches a new approach to a theory of everything that builds on philosophers like Peirce…
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Spring online course at CIIS.edu – Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology
Auditors are welcome, though space is limited. Email me at msegall@ciis.edu for more information. One of our core texts in this course will be my Physics of the World-Soul (a new third edition soon to be published).
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[Quantum Decoherence and the Incompleteness of Nature] The Relevance of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology
Quantum Decoherence and the Incompleteness of Nature “[Creativity] prevents us from considering the temporal world as a definite actual creature. For the temporal world is an essential incompleteness.” -Whitehead188 Epperson argues that Whitehead’s account of the process of concrescence, the centerpiece of his metaphysical scheme, provides “an extremely precise, phase-by-phase exemplification” of contemporary “decoherence-based…
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[Whitehead and Contemporary Scientific Theory] The Relevance of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology
Whitehead and Contemporary Scientific Theory “The general principles of physics are exactly what we should expect as a specific exemplification of the metaphysics required by the philosophy of organism.” -Whitehead103 Since its eruption in the 17th century, modern science has instigated profound re-orientations in the outlook and self-conception of European civilization. More recently, in…
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Reflections on Physicist Lawrence Krauss and the Consolations of Philosophy
Below is Lawrence Krauss from a recent interview in the Atlantic (Thanks to Jason/Immanent Transcendence for bringing this controversy to my attention): Krauss: …Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then “natural philosophy” became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there’s a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered…
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The Limits of Language
The Limits of Language It seems ironic, at least in light of the premise of this paper, that the thoughts of a man such as Socrates could have given birth to the last twenty-four hundred years of Western philosophical discourse. Was it not he who said “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance”?…
Footnotes2Plato 